Yossarian marched backward with his gun on his hip and refused to fly any more missions. He marchedbackward because he was continously spinning around as he walked to make certain no one was sneaking up onhim from behind. Every sound to his rear was a warning, every person he passed a potential assassin. He kept hishand on his gun butt constantly and smiled at no one but Hungry Joe. He told Captain Piltchard and CaptainWren that he was through flying. Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren left his name off the flight schedule for thenext mission and reported the matter to Group Headquarters.
Colonel Korn laughed cahnly. “What the devil do you mean, he won’t fly more missions?” he asked with asmile, as Colonel Cathcart crept away into a corner to brood about the sinister import of the name Yossarianpopping up to plague him once again. “Why won’t he?”
“His friend Nately was killed in the crash over Spezia. Maybe that’s why.”
“Who does he think he is—Achilles?” Colonel Korn was pleased with the simile and filed a mental reminder torepeat it the next time he found himself in General Peckem’s presence. “He has to fly more missions. He has nochoice. Go back and tell him you’ll report the matter to us if he doesn’t change his mind.”
“We already did tell him that, sir. It made no difference.”
“What does Major Major say?”
“We never see Major Major. He seems to have disappeared.”
“I wish we could disappear him!” Colonel Cathcart blurted out from the corner peevishly. “The way they did thatfellow Dunbar.”
“Oh, there are plenty of other ways we can handle this one,” Colonel Korn assured him confidently, andcontinued to Piltchard and Wren, “Let’s begin with the kindest. Send him to Rome for a rest for a few days.
Maybe this fellow’s death really did hurt him a bit.”
Nately’s death, in fact, almost killed Yossarian too, for when he broke the news to Nately’s whore in Rome sheuttered a piercing, heartbroken shriek and tried to stab him to death with a potato peeler.
“Bruto!” she howled at him in hysterical fury as he bent her arm up around behind her back and twisted gradually until the potato peeler dropped from her grasp. “Bruto! Bruto!” She lashed at him swiftly with thelong-nailed fingers of her free hand and raked open his cheek. She spat in his face viciously.
“What’s the matter?” he screamed in stinging pain and bewilderment, flinging her away from him all the wayacross the room to the wall. “What do you want from me?”
She flew back at him with both fists flailing and bloodied his mouth with a solid punch before he was able tograb her wrists and hold her still. Her hair tossed wildly. Tears were streaming in single torrents from herflashing, hate-filled eyes as she struggled against him fiercely in an irrational frenzy of maddened might, snarlingand cursing savagely and screaming “Bruto! Bruto!” each time he tried to explain. Her great strength caught himoff guard, and he lost his footing. She was nearly as tall as Yossarian, and for a few fantastic, terror-filledmoments he was certain she would overpower him in her crazed determination, crush him to the ground and riphim apart mercilessly limb from limb for some heinous crime he had never committed. He wanted to yell forhelp as they strove against each other frantically in a grunting, panting stalemate, arm against arm. At last sheweakened, and he was able to force her back and plead with her to let him talk, swearing to her that Nately’sdeath had not been his fault. She spat in his face again, and he pushed her away hard in disgusted anger andfrustration. She hurled herself down toward the potato peeler the instant he released her. He flung himself downafter her, and they rolled over each other on the floor several times before he could tear the potato peeler away.
She tried to trip him with her hand as he scrambled to his feet and scratched an excruciating chunk out of hisankle. He hopped across the room in pain and threw the potato peeler out the window. He heaved a huge sigh ofrelief once he saw he was safe.
“Now, please let me explain something to you,” he cajoled in a mature, reasoning, earnest voice.
She kicked him in the groin. Whoosh! went the air out of him, and he sank down on his side with a shrill andululating cry, doubled up over his knees in chaotic agony and retching for breath. Nately’s whore ran from theroom. Yossarian staggered up to his feet not a moment too soon, for she came charging back in from the kitchencarrying a long bread knife. A moan of incredulous dismay wafted from his lips as, still clutching his throbbing,tender, burning bowels in both hands, he dropped his full weight down against her shins and knocked her legsout from under her. She flipped completely over his head and landed on the floor on her elbows with a jarringthud. The knife skittered free, and he slapped it out of sight under the bed. She tried to lunge after it, and heseized her by the arm and yanked her up. She tried to kick him in the groin again, and he slung her away with aviolent oath of his own. She slammed into the wall off balance and smashed a chair over into a vanity tablecovered with combs, hairbrushes and cosmetic jars that all went crashing off. A framed picture fell to the floor atthe other end of the room, the glass front shattering.
“What do you want from me?” he yelled at her in whining and exasperated confusion. “I didn’t kill him.”
She hurled a heavy glass ash tray at his head. He made a fist and wanted to punch her in the stomach when shecame charging at him again, but he was afraid he might harm her. He wanted to clip her very neatly on the pointof the jaw and run from the room, but there was no clear target, and he merely skipped aside neatly at the lastsecond and helped her along past him with a strong shove. She banged hard against the other wall. Now she wasblocking the door. She threw a large vase at him. Then she came at him with a full wine bottle and struck him squarely on the temple, knocking him down half-stunned on one knee. His ears were buzzing, his whole face wasnumb. More than anything else, he was embarrassed. He felt awkward because she was going to murder him. Hesimply did not understand what was going on. He had no idea what to do. But he did know he had to savehimself, and he catapulted forward off the floor when he saw her raise the wine bottle to clout him again andbarreled into her midriff before she could strike him. He had momentum, and he propelled her before himbackward in his driving rush until her knees buckled against the side of the bed and she fell over onto themattress with Yossarian sprawled on top of her between her legs. She plunged her nails into the side of his neckand gouged as he worked his way up the supple, full hills and ledges of her rounded body until he covered hercompletely and pressed her into submission, his fingers pursuing her thrashing arm persistently until they arrivedat the wine bottle finally and wrenched it free. She was still kicking and cursing and scratching ferociously. Shetried to bite him cruelly, her coarse, sensual lips stretched back over her teeth like an enraged omnivorousbeast’s. Now that she lay captive beneath him, he wondered how he would ever escape her without leavinghimself vulnerable. He could feel the tensed, straddling inside of her buffeting thighs and knees squeezing andchurning around one of his legs. He was stirred by thoughts of sex that made him ashamed. He was conscious ofthe voluptuous flesh of her firm, young-woman’s body straining and beating against him like a humid, fluid,delectable, unyielding tide, her belly and warm, live, plastic breasts thrusting upward against him vigorously insweet and menacing temptation. Her breath was scalding. All at once he realized—though the writhingturbulence beneath him had not diminished one whit—that she was no longer grappling with him, recognizedwith a quiver that she was not fighting him but heaving her pelvis up against him remorselessly in the primal,powerful, rhapsodic instinctual rhythm of erotic ardor and abandonment. He gasped in delighted surprise. Herface—as beautiful as a blooming flower to him now—was distorted with a new kind of torture, the tissuesserenely swollen, her half-closed eyes misty and unseeing with the stultifying languor of desire.
“Caro,” she murmured hoarsely as though from the depths of a tranquil and luxurious trance. “Ooooh, caro mio.”
He stroked her hair. She drove her mouth against his face with savage passion. He licked her neck. She wrappedher arms around him and hugged. He felt himself falling, falling ecstatically in love with her as she kissed himagain and again with lips that were steaming and wet and soft and hard, mumbling deep sounds to him adoringlyin an incoherent oblivion of rapture, one caressing hand on his back slipping deftly down inside his trouser beltwhile the other groped secretly and treacherously about on the floor for the bread knife and found it. He savedhimself just in time. She still wanted to kill him! He was shocked and astounded by her depraved subteruge as hetore the knife from her grasp and hurled it away. He bounded out of the bed to his feet. His face was agog withbefuddlement and disillusion. He did not know whether to dart through the door to freedom or collapse on thebed to fall in love with her and place himself abjectly at her mercy again. She spared him from doing either bybursting unpredictably into tears. He was stunned again.
This time she wept with no other emotion than grief, profound, debilitating, humble grief, forgetting all abouthim. Her desolation was pathetic as she sat with her tempestuous, proud, lovely head bowed, her shoulderssagging, her spirit melting. This time there was no mistaking her anguish. Great racking sobs choked and shookher. She was no longer aware of him, no longer cared. He could have walked from the room safely then. But hechose to remain and console and help her.
“Please,” he urged her inarticulately with his arm about her shoulders, recollecting with pained sadness how inarticulate and enfeebled he had felt in the plane coming back from Avignon when Snowden kept whimperingto him that he was cold, he was cold, and all Yossarian could offer him in return was “There, there. There,there.” “Please,” he repeated to her sympathetically. “Please, please.”
She rested against him and cried until she seemed too weak to cry any longer, and did not look at him once untilhe extended his handkerchief when she had finished. She wiped her cheeks with a tiny, polite smile and gave thehandkerchief back, murmuring “Grazie, grazie” with meek, maidenly propriety, and then, without any warningwhatsoever of a change in mood, clawed suddenly at his eyes with both hands. She landed with each and let out avictorious shriek.
“Ha! Assassino!” she hooted, and raced joyously across the room for the bread knife to finish him off.
Half blinded, he rose and stumbled after her. A noise behind him made him turn. His senses reeled in horror atwhat he saw. Nately’s whore’s kid sister, of all people, was coming after him with another long bread knife!
“Oh, no,” he wailed with a shudder, and he knocked the knife out of her hand with a sharp downward blow onher wrist. He lost patience entirely with the whole grotesque and incomprehensible melee. There was no tellingwho might lunge at him next through the doorway with another long bread knife, and he lifted Nately’s whore’skid sister off the floor, threw her at Nately’s whore and ran out of the room, out of the apartment and down thestairs. The two girls chased out into the hall after him. He heard their footsteps lag farther and farther behind ashe fled and then cease altogether. He heard sobbing directly overhead. Glancing backward up the stair well, hespied Nately’s whore sitting in a heap on one of the steps, weeping with her face in both hands, while her pagan,irrepressible kid sister hung dangerously over the banister shouting “Bruto! Bruto!” down at him happily andbrandished her bread knife at him as though it were an exciting new toy she was eager to use.
Yossarian escaped, but kept looking back over his shoulder anxiously as he retreated through the street. Peoplestared at him strangely, making him more apprehensive. He walked in nervous haste, wondering what there wasin his appearance that caught everyone’s attention. When he touched his hand to a sore spot on his forehead, hisfingers turned gooey with blood, and he understood. He dabbed his face and neck with a handkerchief. Whereverit pressed, he picked up new red smudges. He was bleeding everywhere. He hurried into the Red Cross buildingand down the two steep flights of white marble stairs to the men’s washroom, where he cleansed and nursed hisinnumerable visible wounds with cold water and soap and straightened his shirt collar and combed his hair. Hehad never seen a face so badly bruised and scratched as the one still blinking back at him in the mirror with adazed and startled uneasiness. What on earth had she wanted from him?
When he left the men’s room, Nately’s whore was waiting outside in ambush. She was crouched against the wallnear the bottom of the staircase and came pouncing down upon him like a hawk with a glittering silver steakknife in her fist. He broke the brunt of her assault with his upraised elbow and punched her neatly on the jaw.
Her eyes rolled. He caught her before she dropped and sat her down gently. Then he ran up the steps and out ofthe building and spent the next three hours hunting through the city for Hungry Joe so that he could get awayfrom Rome before she could find him again. He did not feel really safe until the plane had taken off. When theylanded in Pianosa, Nately’s whore, disguised in a mechanic’s green overalls, was waiting with her steak knifeexactly where the plane stopped, and all that saved him as she stabbed at his chest in her leather-soled high heeled shoes was the gravel underfoot that made her feet roll out from under her. Yossarian, astounded, hauledher up into the plane and held her motionless on the floor in a double armlock while Hungry Joe radioed thecontrol tower for permission to return to Rome. At the airport in Rome, Yossarian dumped her out of the planeon the taxi strip, and Hungry Joe took right off for Pianosa again without even cutting his engines. Scarcelybreathing, Yossarian scrutinized every figure warily as he and Hungry Joe walked back through the squadrontoward their tents. Hungry Joe eyed him steadily with a fu............