“Cut,” said a doctor.

　　“You cut,” said another.

　　“No cuts,” said Yossarian with a thick, unwieldy tongue.

　　“Now look who’s butting in,” complained one of the doctors. “Another county heard from. Are we going tooperate or aren’t we?”

　　“He doesn’t need an operation,” complained the other. “It’s a small wound. All we have to do is stop thebleeding, clean it out and put a few stitches in.”

　　“But I’ve never had a chance to operate before. Which one is the scalpel? Is this one the scalpel?”

　　“No, the other one is the scalpel. Well, go ahead and cut already if you’re going to. Make the incision.”

　　“Like this?”

　　“Not there, you dope!”

　　“No incisions,” Yossarian said, perceiving through the lifting fog of insensibility that the two strangers wereready to begin cutting him.

　　“Another county heard from,” complained the first doctor sarcastically. “Is he going to keep talking that waywhile I operate on him?”

　　“You can’t operate on him until I admit him,” said a clerk.

　　“You can’t admit him until I clear him,” said a fat, gruff colonel with a mustache and an enormous pink face thatpressed down very close to Yossarian and radiated scorching heat like the bottom of a huge frying pan. “Wherewere you born?”

　　The fat, gruff colonel reminded Yossarian of the fat, gruff colonel who had interrogated the chaplain and foundhim guilty. Yossarian stared up at him through a glassy film. The cloying scents of formaldehyde and alcoholsweetened the air.

　　“On a battlefield,” he answered.

　　“No, no. In what state were you born?”

　　“In a state of innocence.”

　　“No, no, you don’t understand.”

　　“Let me handle him,” urged a hatchet-faced man with sunken acrimonious eyes and a thin, malevolent mouth.

　　“Are you a smart aleck or something?” he asked Yossarian.

　　“He’s delirious,” one of the doctors said. “Why don’t you let us take him back inside and treat him?”

　　“Leave him right here if he’s delirious. He might say something incriminating.”

　　“But he’s still bleeding profusely. Can’t you see? He might even die.”

　　“Good for him!”

　　“It would serve the finky bastard right,” said the fat, gruff colonel. “All right, John, let’s speak out. We want toget to the truth.”

　　“Everyone calls me Yo-Yo.”

　　“We want you to co-operate with us, Yo-Yo. We’re your friends and we want you to trust us. We’re here to helpyou. We’re not going to hurt you.”

　　“Let’s jab our thumbs down inside his wound and gouge it,” suggested the hatchet-faced man.

　　Yossarian let his eyes fall closed and hoped they would think he was unconscious.

　　“He’s fainted,” he heard a doctor say. “Can’t we treat him now before it’s too late? He really might die.”

　　“All right, take him. I hope the bastard does die.”

　　“You can’t treat him until I admit him,” the clerk said.

　　Yossarian played dead with his eyes shut while the clerk admitted him by shuffling some papers, and then hewas rolled away slowly into a stuffy, dark room with searing spotlights overhead in which the cloying smell offormaldehyde and sweet alcohol was even stronger. The pleasant, permeating stink was intoxicating. He smelledether too and heard glass tinkling. He listened with secret, egotistical mirth to the husky breathing of the twodoctors. It delighted him that they thought he was unconscious and did not know he was listening. It all seemed very silly to him until one of the doctors said,“Well, do you think we should save his life? They might be sore at us if we do.”

　　“Let’s operate,” said the other doctor. “Let’s cut him open and get to the inside of things once and for all. Hekeeps complaining about his liver. His liver looks pretty small on this X ray.”

　　“That’s his pancreas, you dope. This is his liver.”

　　“No it isn’t. That’s his heart. I’ll bet you a nickel this is his liver. I’m going to operate and find out. Should Iwash my hands first?”

　　“No operations,” Yossarian said, opening his eyes and trying to sit up.

　　“Another county heard from,” scoffed one of the doctors indignantly. “Can’t we make him shut up?”

　　“We could give him a total. The ether’s right here.”

　　“No totals,” said Yossarian.

　　“Another county heard from,” said a doctor.

　　“Let’s give him a total and knock him out. Then we can do what we want with him.”

　　They gave Yossarian total anesthesia and knocked him out. He woke up thirsty in a private room, drowning inether fumes. Colonel Korn was there at his bedside, waiting calmly in a chair in his baggy, wool, olive-drab shirtand trousers. A bland, phlegmatic smile hung on his brown face with its heavy-bearded cheeks, and he wasbuffing the facets of his bald head gently with the palms of both hands. He bent forward chuckling whenYossarian awoke, and assured him in the friendliest tones that the deal they had made was still on if Yossariandidn’t die. Yossarian vomited, and Colonel Korn shot to his feet at the first cough and fled in disgust, so itseemed indeed that there was a silver lining to every cloud, Yossarian reflected, as he drifted back into asuffocating daze. A hand with sharp fingers shook him awake roughly. He turned and opened his eyes and saw astrange man with a mean face who curled his lip at him in a spiteful scowl and bragged,“We’ve got your pal, buddy. We’ve got your pal.”

　　Yossarian turned cold and faint and broke into a sweat.

　　“Who’s my pal?” he asked when he saw the chaplain sitting where Colonel Korn had been sitting.

　　“Maybe I’m your pal,” the chaplain answered.

　　But Yossarian couldn’t hear him and closed his eyes. Someone gave him water to sip and tiptoed away. He slept and woke up feeling great until he turned his head to smile at the chaplain and saw Aarfy there instead.

　　Yossarian moaned instinctively and screwed his face up with excruciating irritability when Aarfy chortled andasked how he was feeling. Aarfy looked puzzled when Yossarian inquired why he was not in jail. Yossarian shuthis eyes to make him go away. When he opened them, Aarfy was gone and the chaplain was there. Yossarianbroke into laughter when he spied the chaplain’s cheerful grin and asked him what in the hell he was so happyabout.

　　“I’m happy about you,” the chaplain replied with excited candor and joy. “I heard at Group that you were veryseriously injured and that you would have to be sent home if you lived. Colonel Korn said your condition wascritical. But I’ve just learned from one of the doctors that your wound is really a very slight one and that you’llprobably be able to leave in a day or two. You’re in no danger. It isn’t bad at all.”

　　Yossarian listened to the chaplain’s news with enormous relief. “That’s good.”

　　“Yes,” said the chaplain, a pink flush of impish pleasure creeping into his cheeks. “Yes, that is good.”

　　Yossarian laughed, recalling his first conversation with the chaplain. “You know, the first time I met you was inthe hospital. And now I’m in the hospital again. Just about the only time I see you lately is in the hospital.

　　Where’ve you been keeping yourself?”

　　The chaplain shrugged. “I’ve been praying a lot,” he confessed. “I try to stay in my tent as much as I can, and Ipray every time Sergeant Whitcomb leaves the area, so that he won’t catch me.”

　　“Does it do any good?”

　　“It takes my mind off my troubles,” the chaplain answered with another shrug. “And it gives me something todo.”

　　“Well that’s good, then, isn’t it?”

　　“Yes,” agreed the chaplain enthusiastically, as though the idea had not occurred to him before. “Yes, I guess thatis good.” He bent forward impulsively with awkward solicitude. “Yossarian, is there anything I can do for youwhile you’re here, anything I can get you?”

　　Yossarian teased him jovially. “Like toys, or candy, or chewing gum?”

　　The chaplain blushed again, grinning self-consciously, and then turned very respectful. “Like books, perhaps, oranything at all. I wish there was something I could do to make you happy. You know, Yossarian, we’re all veryproud of you.”

　　“Proud?”

　　“Yes, of course. For risking your life to stop that Nazi assassin. It was a very noble thing to do.”

　　“What Nazi assassin?”

　　“The one that came here to murder Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. And you saved them. He might havestabbed you to death as you grappled with him on the balcony. It’s a lucky thing you’re alive!”

　　Yossarian snickered sardonically when he understood. “That was no Nazi assassin.”

　　“Certainly it was. Colonel Korn said it was.”

　　“That was Nately’s girl friend. And she was after me, not Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. She’s been tryingto kill me ever since I broke the news to her that Nately was dead.”

　　“But how could that be?” the chaplain protested in livid and resentful confusion. “Colonel Cathcart and ColonelKorn both saw him as he ran away. The official report says you stopped a Nazi assassin from killing them.”

　　“Don’t believe the official report,” Yossarian advised dryly. “It’s part of the deal.”

　　“What deal?”

　　“The deal I made with Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. They’ll let me go home a big hero if I say nice thingsabout them to everybody and never criticize them to anyone for making the rest of the men fly more missions.”

　　The chaplain was appalled and rose halfway out of his chair. He bristled with bellicose dismay. “But that’sterrible! That’s a shameful, scandalous deal, isn’t it?”

　　“Odious,” Yossarian answered, staring up woodenly at the ceiling with just the back of his head resting on thepillow. “I think ‘odious’ is the word we decided on.”

　　“Then how could you agree to it?”

　　“It’s that or a court-martial, Chaplain.”

　　“Oh,” the chaplain exclaimed with a look of stark remorse, the back of his hand covering his mouth. He loweredhimself into his chair uneasily. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

　　“They’d lock me in prison with a bunch of criminals.”

　　“Of course. You must do whatever you think is right, then.” The chaplain nodded to himself as though decidingthe argument and lapsed into embarrassed silence.

　　“Don’t worry,” Yossarian said with a sorrowful laugh after several moments had passed. “I’m not going to doit.”

　　“But you must do it,” the chaplain insisted, bending forward with concern. “Really, you must. I had no right toinfluence you. I really had no right to say anything.”

　　“You didn’t influence me.” Yossarian hauled himself over onto his side and shook his head in solemn mockery.

　　“Christ, Chaplain! Can you imagine that for a sin? Saving Colonel Cathcart’s life! That’s one crime I don’t wanton my record.”

　　The chaplain returned to the subject with caution. “What will you do instead? You can’t let them put you inprison.”

　　“I’ll fly more missions. Or maybe I really will desert and let them catch me. They probably would.”

　　“And they’d put you in prison. You don’t want to go to prison.”

　　“Then I’ll just keep flying missions until the war ends, I guess. Some of us have to survive.”

　　“But you might get killed.”

　　“Then I guess I won’t fly any more missions.”

　　“What will you do?”

　　“I don’t know.”

　　“Will you let them send you home?”

　　“I don’t know. Is it hot out? It’s very warm in here.”

　　“It’s very cold out,” the chaplain said.

　　“You know,” Yossarian remembered, “a very funny thing happened—maybe I dreamed it. I think a strange mancame in here before and told me he’s got my pal. I wonder if I imagined it.”

　　“I don’t think you did,” the chaplain informed him. “You started to tell me about him when I dropped in earlier.”

　　“Then he really did say it. ‘We’ve got your pal, buddy,’ he said. ‘We’ve got your pal.’ He had the mostmalignant man............