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Chapter 19 Colonel Cathcart

    Colonel Cathcart was a slick, successful, slipshod, unhappy man of thirty-six who lumbered when he walked andwanted to be a general. He was dashing and dejected, poised and chagrined. He was complacent and insecure,daring in the administrative stratagems he employed to bring himself to the attention of his superiors and cravenin his concern that his schemes might all backfire. He was handsome and unattractive, a swashbuckling, beefy,conceited man who was putting on fat and was tormented chronically by prolonged seizures of apprehension.

  Colonel Cathcart was conceited because he was a full colonel with a combat command at the age of only thirty-six; and Colonel Cathcart was dejected because although he was already thirty-six he was still only a full colonel.

  Colonel Cathcart was impervious to absolutes. He could measure his own progress only in relationship to others,and his idea of excellence was to do something at least as well as all the men his own age who were doing thesame thing even better. The fact that there were thousands of men his own age and older who had not evenattained the rank of major enlivened him with foppish delight in his own remarkable worth; on the other hand,the fact that there were men of his own age and younger who were already generals contaminated him with anagonizing sense of failure and made him gnaw at his fingernails with an unappeasable anxiety that was evenmore intense than Hungry Joe’s.

  Colonel Cathcart was a very large, pouting, broadshouldered man with close-cropped curly dark hair that wasgraying at the tips and an ornate cigarette holder that he purchased the day before he arrived in Pianosa to takecommand of his group. He displayed the cigarette holder grandly on every occasion and had learned tomanipulate it adroitly. Unwittingly, he had discovered deep within himself a fertile aptitude for smoking with acigarette holder. As far as he could tell, his was the only cigarette holder in the whole Mediterranean theater ofoperations, and the thought was both flattering and disquieting. He had no doubts at all that someone as debonairand intellectual as General Peckem approved of his smoking with a cigarette holder, even though the two were ineach other’s presence rather seldom, which in a way was very lucky, Colonel Cathcart recognized with relief,since General Peckem might not have approved of his cigarette holder at all. When such misgivings assailedColonel Cathcart, he choked back a sob and wanted to throw the damned thing away, but he was restrained byhis unswerving conviction that the cigarette holder never failed to embellish his masculine, martial physique with a high gloss of sophisticated heroism that illuminated him to dazzling advantage among all the other full colonelsin the American Army with whom he was in competition. Although how could he be sure?

  Colonel Cathcart was indefatigable that way, an industrious, intense, dedicated military tactician who calculatedday and night in the service of himself. He was his own sarcophagus, a bold and infallible diplomat who wasalways berating himself disgustedly for all the chances he had missed and kicking himself regretfully for all theerrors he had made. He was tense, irritable, bitter and smug. He was a valorous opportunist who pouncedhoggishly upon every opportunity Colonel Korn discovered for him and trembled in damp despair immediatelyafterward at the possible consequences he might suffer. He collected rumors greedily and treasured gossip. Hebelieved all the news he heard and had faith in none. He was on the alert constantly for every signal, shrewdlysensitive to relationships and situations that did not exist. He was someone in the know who was always strivingpathetically to find out what was going on. He was a blustering, intrepid bully who brooded inconsolably overthe terrible ineradicable impressions he knew he kept making on people of prominence who were scarcely awarethat he was even alive.

  Everybody was persecuting him. Colonel Cathcart lived by his wits in an unstable, arithmetical world of blackeyes and feathers in his cap, of overwhelming imaginary triumphs and catastrophic imaginary defeats. Heoscillated hourly between anguish and exhilaration, multiplying fantastically the grandeur of his victories andexaggerating tragically the seriousness of his defeats. Nobody ever caught him napping. If word reached him thatGeneral Dreedle or General Peckem had been seen smiling, frowning, or doing neither, he could not makehimself rest until he had found an acceptable interpretation and grumbled mulishly until Colonel Korn persuadedhim to relax and take things easy.

  Lieutenant Colonel Korn was a loyal, indispensable ally who got on Colonel Cathcart’s nerves. Colonel Cathcartpledged eternal gratitude to Colonel Korn for the ingenious moves he devised and was furious with himafterward when he realized they might not work. Colonel Cathcart was greatly indebted to Colonel Korn and didnot like him at all. The two were very close. Colonel Cathcart was jealous of Colonel Korn’s intelligence and hadto remind himself often that Colonel Korn was still only a lieutenant colonel, even though he was almost tenyears older than Colonel Cathcart, and that Colonel Korn had obtained his education at a state university.

  Colonel Cathcart bewailed the miserable fate that had given him for an invaluable assistant someone as commonas Colonel Korn. It was degrading to have to depend so thoroughly on a person who had been educated at a stateuniversity. If someone did have to become indispensable to him, Colonel Cathcart lamented, it could just aseasily have been someone wealthy and well groomed, someone from a better family who was more mature thanColonel Korn and who did not treat Colonel Cathcart’s desire to become a general as frivolously as ColonelCathcart secretly suspected Colonel Korn secretly did.

  Colonel Cathcart wanted to be a general so desperately he was willing to try anything, even religion, and hesummoned the chaplain to his office late one morning the week after he had raised the number of missions tosixty and pointed abruptly down toward his desk to his copy of The Saturday Evening Post. The colonel wore hiskhaki shirt collar wide open, exposing a shadow of tough black bristles of beard on his egg-white neck, and had aspongy hanging underlip. He was a person who never tanned, and he kept out of the sun as much as possible toavoid burning. The colonel was more than a head taller than the chaplain and over twice as broad, and hisswollen, overbearing authority made the chaplain feel frail and sickly by contrast.

  “Take a look, Chaplain,” Colonel Cathcart directed, screwing a cigarette into his holder and seating himselfaffluently in the swivel chair behind his desk. “Let me know what you think.”

  The chaplain looked down at the open magazine compliantly and saw an editorial spread dealing with anAmerican bomber group in England whose chaplain said prayers in the briefing room before each mission. Thechaplain almost wept with happiness when he realized the colonel was not going to holler at him. The two hadhardly spoken since the tumultuous evening Colonel Cathcart had thrown him out of the officers’ club at GeneralDreedle’s bidding after Chief White Halfoat had punched Colonel Moodus in the nose. The chaplain’s initial fearhad been that the colonel intended reprimanding him for having gone back into the officers’ club withoutpermission the evening before. He had gone there with Yossarian and Dunbar after the two had comeunexpectedly to his tent in the clearing in the woods to ask him to join them. Intimidated as he was by ColonelCathcart, he nevertheless found it easier to brave his displeasure than to decline the thoughtful invitation of histwo new friends, whom he had met on one of his hospital visits just a few weeks before and who had worked soeffectively to insulate him against the myriad social vicissitudes involved in his official duty to live on closestterms of familiarity with more than nine hundred unfamiliar officers and enlisted men who thought him an oddduck.

  The chaplain glued his eyes to the pages of the magazine. He studied each photograph twice and read thecaptions intently as he organized his response to the colonel’s question into a grammatically complete sentencethat he rehearsed and reorganized in his mind a considerable number of times before he was able finally tomuster the courage to reply.

  “I think that saying prayers before each mission is a very moral and highly laudatory procedure, sir,” he offeredtimidly, and waited.

  “Yeah,” said the colonel. “But I want to know if you think they’ll work here.”

  “Yes, sir,” answered the chaplain after a few moments. “I should think they would.”

  “Then I’d like to give it a try.” The colonel’s ponderous, farinaceous cheeks were tinted suddenly with glowingpatches of enthusiasm. He rose to his feet and began walking around excitedly. “Look how much good they’vedone for these people in England. Here’s a picture of a colonel in The Saturday Evening Post whose chaplainconducts prayers before each mission. If the prayers work for him, they should work for us. Maybe if we sayprayers, they’ll put my picture in The Saturday Evening Post.”

  The colonel sat down again and smiled distantly in lavish contemplation. The chaplain had no hint of what hewas expected to say next. With a pensive expression on his oblong, rather pale face, he allowed his gaze to settleon several of the high bushels filled with red plum tomatoes that stood in rows against each of the walls. Hepretended to concentrate on a reply. After a while he realized that he was staring at rows and rows of bushels ofred plum tomatoes and grew so intrigued by the question of what bushels brimming with red plum tomatoes weredoing in a group commander’s office that he forgot completely about the discussion of prayer meetings untilColonel Cathcart, in a genial digression, inquired:

  “Would you like to buy some, Chaplain? They come right off the farm Colonel Korn and I have up in the hills. Ican let you have a bushel wholesale.”

  “Oh, no, sir. I don’t think so.”

  “That’s quite all right,” the colonel assured him liberally. “You don’t have to. Milo is glad to snap up all we canproduce. These were picked only yesterday. Notice how firm and ripe they are, like a young girl’s breasts.”

  The chaplain blushed, and the colonel understood at once that he had made a mistake. He lowered his head inshame, his cumbersome face burning. His fingers felt gross and unwieldy. He hated the chaplain venomously forbeing a chaplain and making a coarse blunder out of an observation that in any other circumstances, he knew,would have been considered witty and urbane. He tried miserably to recall some means of extricating them bothfrom their devastating embarrassment. He recalled instead that the chaplain was only a captain, and hestraightened at once with a shocked and outraged gasp. His cheeks grew tight with fury at the thought that he hadjust been duped into humiliation by a man who was almost the same age as he was and still only a captain, andhe swung upon the chaplain avengingly with a look of such murderous antagonism that the chaplain began totremble. The colonel punished him sadistically with a long, glowering, malignant, hateful, silent stare.

  “We were speaking about something else,” he reminded the chaplain cuttingly at last. “We were not speakingabout the firm, ripe breasts of beautiful young girls but about something else entirely. We were speaking aboutconducting religious services in the briefing room before each mission. Is there any reason why we can’t?”

  “No, sir,” the chaplain mumbled.

  “Then we’ll begin with this afternoon’s mission.” The colonel’s hostility softened gradually as he appliedhimself to details. “Now, I want you to give a lot of thought to the kind of prayers we’re going to say. I don’twant anything heavy or sad. I’d like you to keep it light and snappy, something that will send the boys outfeeling pretty good. Do you know what I mean? I don’t want any of this Kingdom of God or Valley of Deathstuff. That’s all too negative. What are you making such a sour face for?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the chaplain stammered. “I happened to be thinking of the Twenty-third Psalm just as you saidthat.”

  “How does that one go?”

  “That’s the one you were just referring to, sir. ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I—‘”

  “That’s the one I was just referring to. It’s out. What else have you got?”

  “’Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto—‘”

  “No waters,” the colonel decided, blowing ruggedly into his cigarette holder after flipping the butt down into his combed-brass ash tray. “Why don’t we try something musical? How about the harps on the willows?”

  “That has the rivers of Babylon in it, sir,” the chaplain replied. “’...there we sat down, yea, we wept, when weremembered Zion.’”

  ............

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