AllFreeNovel
Share Us
' Milo knows the black market. There's no demand for cotton.'
'But there is a demand for medical supplies. I can roll the cotton up on wooden toothpicks and peddle them as sterile swabs. Will he sell to me at a good price?'
'He won't sell to you at any price,' Yossarian answered. 'He's pretty sore at you for going into competition with him. In fact, he's pretty sore at everybody for getting diarrhea last weekend and giving his mess hall a bad name. Say, you can help us.' Yossarian suddenly seized his arm. 'Couldn't you forge some official orders on that mimeograph machine of yours and get us out of flying to Bologna?' Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen pulled away slowly with a look of scorn. 'Sure I could,' he explained with pride. 'But I would never dream of doing anything like that.'
'Why not?'
'Because it's your job. We all have our jobs to do. My job is to unload these Zippo lighters at a profit if I can and pick up some cotton from Milo. Your job is to bomb the ammunition dumps at Bologna.'
'But I'm going to be killed at Bologna,' Yossarian pleaded. 'We're all going to be killed.'
'Then you'll just have to be killed,' replied ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen. 'Why can't you be a fatalist about it the way I am? If I'm destined to unload these lighters at a profit and pick up some Egyptian cotton cheap from Milo, then that's what I'm going to do. And if you're destined to be killed over Bologna, then you're going to be killed, so you might just as well go out and die like a man. I hate to say this, Yossarian, but you're turning into a chronic complainer.' Clevinger agreed with ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen that it was Yossarian's job to get killed over Bologna and was livid with condemnation when Yossarian confessed that it was he who had moved the bomb line and caused the mission to be canceled.
'Why the hell not?' Yossarian snarled, arguing all the more vehemently because he suspected he was wrong. 'Am I supposed to get my ass shot off just because the colonel wants to be a general?'
'What about the men on the mainland?' Clevinger demanded with just as much emotion. 'Are they supposed to get their asses shot off just because you don't want to go? Those men are entitled to air support!'
'But not necessarily by me. Look, they don't care who knocks out those ammunition dumps. The only reason we're going is because that bastard Cathcart volunteered us.'
'Oh, I know all that,' Clevinger assured him, his gaunt face pale and his agitated brown eyes swimming in sincerity. 'But the fact remains that those ammunition dumps are still standing. You know very well that I don't approve of Colonel Cathcart any more than you do.' Clevinger paused for emphasis, his mouth quivering, and then beat his fist down softly against his sleeping-bag. 'But it's not for us to determine what targets must be destroyed or who's to destroy them or--'
'Or who gets killed doing it? And why?'
'Yes, even that. We have no right to question--'
'You're insane!'
'--no right to question--'
'Do you really mean that it's not my business how or why I get killed and that it is Colonel Cathcart's? Do you really mean that?'
'Yes, I do,' Clevinger insisted, seeming unsure. 'There are men entrusted with winning the war who are in a much better position than we are to decide what targets have to be bombed.'
'We are talking about two different things,' Yossarian answered with exaggerated weariness. 'You are talking about the relationship of the Air Corps to the infantry, and I am talking about the relationship of me to Colonel Cathcart. You are talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive.'
'Exactly,' Clevinger snapped smugly. 'And which do you think is more important?'
'To whom?' Yossarian shot back. 'Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.' Clevinger sat for a moment as though he'd been slapped. 'Congratulations!' he exclaimed bitterly, the thinnest milk-white line enclosing his lips tightly in a bloodless, squeezing ring. 'I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy.'
'The enemy,' retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, 'is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.' But Clevinger did forget it, and now he was dead. At the time, Clevinger was so upset by the incident that Yossarian did not dare tell him he had also been responsible for the epidemic of diarrhea that had caused the other unnecessary postponement. Milo was even more upset by the possibility that someone had poisoned his squadron again, and he came bustling fretfully to Yossarian for assistance.
'Please find out from Corporal Snark if he put laundry soap in the sweet potatoes again,' he requested furtively. 'Corporal Snark trusts you and will tell you the truth if you give him your word you won't tell anyone else. As soon as he tells you, come and tell me.'
'O
f course I put laundry soap in the sweet potatoes,' Corporal Snark admitted to Yossarian. 'That's what you asked me to do, isn't it? Laundry soap is the best way.'
'He swears to God he didn't have a thing to do with it,' Yossarian reported back to Milo.
Milo pouted dubiously. ' Dunbar says there is no God.' There was no hope left. By the middle of the second week, everyone in the squadron began to look like Hungry Joe, who was not scheduled to fly and screamed horribly in his sleep. He was the only one who could sleep. All night long, men moved through the darkness outside their tents like tongueless wraiths with cigarettes. In the daytime they stared at the bomb line in futile, drooping clusters or at the still figure of Doc Daneeka sitting in front of the closed door of the medical tent beneath the morbid hand-lettered sign. They began to invent humorless, glum jokes of their own and disastrous rumors about the destruction awaiting them at Bologna.
Yossarian sidled up drunkenly to Colonel Korn at the officers' club one night to kid with him about the new Lepage gun that the Germans had moved in.
'What Lepage gun?' Colonel Korn inquired with curiosity.
'The new three-hundred-and-forty-four-millimeter Lepage glue gun,' Yossarian answered. 'It glues a whole formation of planes together in mid-air.' Colonel Korn jerked his elbow free from Yossarian's clutching fingers in startled affront. 'Let go of me, you idiot!' he cried out furiously, glaring with vindictive approval as Nately leaped upon Yossarian's back and pulled him away. 'Who is that lunatic, anyway?' Colonel Cathcart chortled merrily. 'That's the man you made me give a medal to after Ferrara. You had me promote him to captain, too, remember? It serves you right.' Nately was lighter than Yossarian and had great difficulty maneuvering Yossarian's lurching bulk across the room to an unoccupied table. 'Are you crazy?' Nately kept hissing with trepidation. 'That was Colonel Korn. Are you crazy?' Yossarian wanted another drink and promised to leave quietly if Nately brought him one. Then he made Nately bring him two more. When Nately finally coaxed him to the door, Captain Black came stomping in from outside, banging his sloshing shoes down hard on the wood floor and spilling water from his eaves like a high roof.
'Boy, are you bastards in for it!' he announced exuberantly, splashing away from the puddle forming at his feet. 'I just got a call from Colonel Korn. Do you know what they've got waiting for you at Bologna? Ha! Ha! They've got the new Lepage glue gun. It glues a whole formation of planes together in mid-air.'
