Yossarian was going absent without official leave with Milo, who, as the plane cruised toward Rome, shook hishead reproachfully and, with pious lips pulsed, informed Yossarian in ecclesiastical tones that he was ashamed ofhim. Yossarian nodded. Yossarian was making an uncouth spectacle of himself by walking around backwardwith his gun on his hip and refusing to fly more combat missions, Milo said. Yossarian nodded. It was disloyal tohis squadron and embarrassing to his superiors. He was placing Milo in a very uncomfortable position, too.
Yossarian nodded again. The men were starting to grumble. It was not fair for Yossarian to think only of his ownsafety while men like Milo, Colonel Cathcart, Colonel Korn and ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen were willing to doeverything they could to win the war. The men with seventy missions were starring to grumble because they hadto fly eighty, and there was a danger some of them might put on guns and begin walking around backward, too.
Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing histraditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
Yossarian kept nodding in the co-pilot’s seat and tried not to listen as Milo prattled on. Nately’s whore was onhis mind, as were Kraft and Orr and Nately and Dunbar, and Kid Sampson and McWatt, and all the poor andstupid and diseased people he had seen in Italy, Egypt and North Africa and knew about in other areas of theworld, and Snowden and Nately’s whore’s kid sister were on his conscience, too. Yossarian thought he knewwhy Nately’s whore held him responsible for Nately’s death and wanted to kill him. Why the hell shouldn’t she?
It was a man’s world, and she and everyone younger had every right to blame him and everyone older for everyunnatural tragedy that befell them; just as she, even in her grief, was to blame for every man-made misery thatlanded on her kid sister and on all other children behind her. Someone had to do something sometime. Everyvictim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousychain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all. In parts of Africa little boys were still stolen away by adultslave traders and sold for money to men who disemboweled them and ate them. Yossarian marveled that childrencould suffer such barbaric sacrifice without evincing the slightest hint of fear or pain. He took it for granted thatthey did submit so stoically. If not, he reasoned, the custom would certainly have died, for no craving for wealthor immortality could be so great, he felt, as to subsist on the sorrow of children.
He was rocking the boat, Milo said, and Yossarian nodded once more. He was not a good member of the team,Milo said. Yossarian nodded and listened to Milo tell him that the decent thing to do if he did not like the wayColonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn were running the group was go to Russia, instead of stirring up trouble.
Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn had both been very good to Yossarian, Milo said; hadn’t they given him amedal after the last mission to Ferrara and promoted him to captain? Yossarian nodded. Didn’t they feed him andgive him his pay every month? Yossarian nodded again. Milo was sure they would be charitable if he went tothem to apologize and recant and promise to fly eighty missions. Yossarian said he would think it over, and heldhis breath and prayed for a safe landing as Milo dropped his wheels and glided in toward the runway. It wasfunny how he had really come to detest flying.
Rome was in ruins, he saw, when the plane was down. The airdrome had been bombed eight months before, andknobby slabs of white stone rubble had been bulldozed into flat-topped heaps on both sides of the entrancethrough the wire fence surrounding the field. The Colosseum was a dilapidated shell, and the Arch ofConstantine had fallen. Nately’s whore’s apartment was a shambles. The girls were gone, and the only one therewas the old woman. The windows in the apartment had been smashed. She was bundled up in sweaters and skirtsand wore a dark shawl about her head. She sat on a wooden chair near an electric hot plate, her arms folded,boiling water in a battered aluminum pot. She was talking aloud to herself when Yossarian entered and beganmoaning as soon as she saw him.
“Gone,” she moaned before he could even inquire. Holding her elbows, she rocked back and forth mournfully onher creaking chair. “Gone.”
“Who?”
“All. All the poor young girls.”
“Where?”
“Away. Chased away into the street. All of them gone. All the poor young girls.”
“Chased away by who? Who did it?”
“The mean tall soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. And by our carabinieri. They came with their clubsand chased them away. They would not even let them take their coats. The poor things. They just chased themaway into the cold.”
“Did they arrest them?”
“They chased them away. They just chased them away.”
“Then why did they do it if they didn’t arrest them?”
“I don’t know,” sobbed the old woman. “I don’t know. Who will take care of me? Who will take care of me nowthat all the poor young girls are gone? Who will take care of me?”
“There must have been a reason,” Yossarian persisted, pounding his fist into his hand. “They couldn’t just bargein here and chase everyone out.”
“No reason,” wailed the old woman. “No reason.”
“What right did they have?”
“Catch-22.”
“What?” Yossarian froze in his tracks with fear and alarm and felt his whole body begin to tingle. “What did yousay?”
“Catch-22” the old woman repeated, rocking her head up and down. “Catch-22. Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest. “How did youknow it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?”
“The soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. The girls were crying. ‘Did we do anything wrong?’ they said.
The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. ‘Then why are you chasing usout?’ the girls said. ‘Catch-22,’ the men said. ‘What right do you have?’ the girls said. ‘Catch-22,’ the men said.
All they kept saying was ‘Catch-22, Catch-22.’ What does it mean, Catch-22? What is Catch-22?”
“Didn’t they show it to you?” Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. “Didn’t you even makethem read it?”
“They don’t have to show us Catch-22,” the old woman answered. “The law says they don’t have to.”
“What law says they don’t have to?”
“Catch-22.”
“Oh, God damn!” Yossarian exclaimed bitterly. “I bet it wasn’t even really there.” He stopped walking andglanced about the room disconsolately. “Where’s the old man?”
“Gone,” mourned the old woman.
“Gone?”
“Dead,” the old woman told him, nodding in emphatic lament, pointing to her head with the flat of her hand.
“Something broke in here. One minute he was living, one minute he was dead.”
“But he can’t be dead!” Yossarian cried, ready to argue insistently. But of course he knew it was true, knew itwas logical and true; once again the old man had marched along with the majority.
Yossarian turned away and trudged through the apartment with a gloomy scowl, peering with pessimisticcuriosity into all the rooms. Everything made of glass had been smashed by the men with the clubs. Torn drapesand bedding lay dumped on the floor. Chairs, tables and dressers had been overturned. Everything breakable hadbeen broken. The destruction was total. No wild vandals could have been more thorough. Every window wassmashed, and darkness poured like inky clouds into each room through the shattered panes. Yossarian couldimagine the heavy, crashing footfalls of the tall M.P.s in the hard white hats. He could picture the fiery andmalicious exhilaration with which they had made their wreckage, and their sanctimonious, ruthless sense of rightand dedication. All the poor young girls were gone. Everyone was gone but the weeping old woman in the bulkybrown and gray sweaters and black head shawl, and soon she too would be gone.
“Gone,” she grieved, when he walked back in, before he could even speak. “Who will take care of me now?”
Yossarian ignored the question. “Nately’s girl friend—did anyone hear from her?” he asked.
“Gone.”
“I know she’s gone. But did anyone hear from her? Does anyone know where she is?”
“Gone.”
“The little sister. What happened to her?”
“Gone.” The old woman’s tone had not changed.
“Do you know what I’m talking about?” Yossarian asked sharply, staring into her eyes to see if she were notspeaking to him from a coma. He raised his voice. “What happened to the kid sister, to the little girl?”
“Gone, gone,” the old woman replied with a crabby shrug, irritated by his persistence, her low wail growinglouder. “Chased away with the rest, chased away into the street. They would not even let her take her coat.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Who will take care of her?”
“Who will take care of me?”
“She doesn’t know anybody else, does she?”
“Who will take care of me?”
Yossarian left money in the old woman’s lap—it was odd how many wrongs leaving money seemed to right—and strode out of the apartment, cursing Catch-22 vehemently as he descended the stairs, even though he knewthere was no such thing. Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What didmatter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridiculeor refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon or burn up.
It was cold outside, and dark, and a leaky, insipid mist lay swollen in the air and trickled down the large,unpolished stone blocks of the houses and the pedestals of monuments. Yossarian hurried back to Milo andrecanted. He said he was sorry and, knowing he was lying, promised to fly as many more missions as ColonelCathcart wanted if Milo would only use all his influence in Rome to help him locate Nately’s whore’s kid sister.
“She’s just a twelve-year-old virgin, Milo,” he explained anxiously, “and I want to find her before it’s too late.”
Milo responded to his request with a benign smile. “I’ve got just the twelve-year-old virgin you’re looking for,”
he announced jubilantly. “This twelve-year-old virgin is really only thirty-four, but she was brought up on a low-protein diet by very strict parents and didn’t start sleeping with men until—““Milo, I’m talking about a little girl!” Yossarian interrupted him with desperate impatience. “Don’t youunderstand? I don’t want to sleep with her. I want to help her. You’ve got daughters. She’s just a little kid, andshe’s all alone in this city with no one to take care of her. I want to protect her from harm. Don’t you know whatI’m talking about?”
Milo did understand and was deeply touched. “Yossarian, I’m proud of you,” he exclaimed with profoundemotion. “I really am. You don’t know how glad I am to see that everything isn’t always just sex with you.
You’ve got principles. Certainly I’ve got daughters, and I know exactly what you’re talking about. We’ll findthat girl if we have to turn this whole city upside down. Come along.”
Yossarian went along in Milo Minderbinder’s speeding M & M staff car to police headquarters to meet aswarthy, untidy police commissioner with a narrow black mustache and unbuttoned tunic who was fiddling witha stout woman with warts and two chins when they entered his office and who greeted Milo with warm surpriseand bowed and scraped in obscene servility as though Milo were some elegant marquis.
“Ah, Marchese Milo,” he declared with effusive pleasure, pushing the fat, disgruntled woman out the doorwithout even looking toward her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I would have a big party for you.
Come in, come in, Marchese. You almost never visit us any more.”
Milo knew that there was not one moment to waste. “Hello, Luigi,” he said, nodding so briskly that he almostseemed rude. “Luigi, I need your help. My friend here wants to find a girl.”
“A girl, Marchese?” said Luigi, scratching his face pensively. “There are lots of girls in Rome. For an Americanofficer, a girl should not be too difficult.”
“No, Luigi, you don’t understand. This is a twelve-year-old virgin that he has to find right away.”
“Ah, yes, now I understand,” Luigi said sagaciously. “A virgin might take a little time. But if he waits at the busterminal where the young farm girls looking for work arrive, I—““Luigi, you still don’t understand,” Milo snapped with such brusque impatience that the police commissioner’sface flushed and he jumped to attention and began buttoning his uniform in confusion. “This girl is a friend, anold friend of the family, and we want to help her. She’s only a child. She’s all alone in this city somewhere, andwe have to find her before somebody harms her. Now do you understand? Luigi, this is very important to me. Ihave a daughter the same age as that little girl, and nothing in the world means more to me right now than savingthat poor child before it’s too late. Will you help?”
“Si, Marchese, now I understand,” said Luigi. “And I will do everything in my power to find her. But tonight I have almost no men. Tonight all my men are busy trying to break up the traffic in illegal tobacco.”
“Illegal tobacco?” asked Milo.
“Milo,” Yossarian bleated faintly with a sinking heart, sensing at once that all was lost.
“Si, Marchese,” said Luigi. “The profit in illegal tobacco is so high that the smuggling is almost impossible tocontrol.”
“Is there really that much profit in illegal tobacco?” Milo inquired with keen interest, his rust-colored eyebrowsarching avidly and his nostrils sniffing.
“Milo,” Yossarian called to him. “Pay attention to me, will you?”
“Si, Marchese,” Luigi answered. “The profit in illegal tobacco is very high. The smuggling is a national scandal,Marchese, truly a national disgrace.”
“Is that a fact?” Milo observed with a preoccupied smile and started toward the door as though in a spell.
“Milo!” Yossarian yelled, and bounded forward impulsively to intercept him. “Milo, you’ve got to help me.”
“Illegal tobacco,” Milo explained to him with a look of epileptic lust, struggling doggedly to get by. “Let me go.
I’ve got to smuggle illegal tobacco.”
“Stay here and help me find her,” pleaded Yossarian. “You can smuggle illegal tobacco tomorrow.”
But Milo was deaf and kept pushing forward, nonviolently but irresistibly, sweating, his eyes, as though he werein the grip of a blind fixation, burning feverishly, and his twitching mouth slavering. He moaned calmly asthough in remote, instinctive distress and kept repeating, “Illegal tobacco, illegal tobacco.” Yossarian stepped outof the way with resignation finally when he saw it was hopeless to try to reason with him. Milo was gone like ashot. The commissioner of police unbuttoned his tunic again and looked at Yossarian with contempt.
“What do you want here?” he asked coldly. “Do you want me to arrest you?”
Yossarian walked out of the office and down the stairs into the dark, tomblike street, passing in the hall the stoutwoman with warts and two chins, who was already on her way back in. There was no sign of Milo outside. Therewere no lights in any of the windows. The deserted sidewalk rose steeply and continuously for several blocks. Hecould see the glare of a broad avenue at the top of the long cobblestone incline. The police station was almost atthe bottom; the yellow bulbs at the entrance sizzled in the dampness like wet torches. A frigid, fine rain wasfalling. He began walking slowly, pushing uphill. Soon he came to a quiet, cozy, inviting restaurant with redvelvet drapes in the windows and a blue neon sign near the door that said: TONY’s RESTAURANT FINEFOOD AND DRINK. KEEP OUT. The words on the blue neon sign surprised him mildly for only an instant.
Nothing warped seemed bizarre any more in his strange, distorted surroundings. The tops of the sheer buildings slanted in weird, surrealistic perspective, and the street seemed tilted. He raised the collar of his warm woolencoat and hugged it around him. The night was raw. A boy in a thin shirt and thin tattered trousers walked out ofthe darkness on bare feet. The boy had black hair and needed a haircut and shoes and socks. His sickly face waspale and sad. His feet made grisly, soft, sucking sounds in the rain puddles on the wet pavement as he passed,and Yossarian was moved by such intense pity for his poverty that he wanted to smash his pale, sad, sickly facewith his fist and knock him out of existence because he brought to mind all the pale, sad, sickly children in Italythat same night who needed haircuts and needed shoes and socks. He made Yossarian think of cripples and ofcold and hungry men and women, and of all the dumb, passive, devout mothers with catatonic eyes nursinginfants outdoors that same night with chilled animal udders bared insensibly to that same raw rain. Cows. Almoston cue, a nursing mother padded past holding an infant in black rags, and Yossarian wanted to smash her too,because she reminded him of the barefoot boy in the thin shirt and thin, tattered trousers and of all the shivering,stupefying misery in a world that never yet had provided enough heat and food and justice for all but aningenious and unscrupulous handful. What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute thatsame night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands weredrunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many familieshungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would takeplace that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords wouldtriumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys werestupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave mencowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had soldtheir souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow pathswere crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good peop............