Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Read Free Book Online

meant.
       ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Doc Daneeka said, as Yossarian
began scratching his back. ‘I’m talking about co-operation. Favors. You do a
favor for me, I’ll do one for you. Get it?’
       ‘Do one for me,’ Yossarian requested.
       ‘Not a chance,’ Doc Daneeka answered.
       There was something fearful and minute about Doc Daneeka as
he sat despondently outside his tent in the sunlight as often as he could,
dressed in khaki summer trousers and a short-sleeved summer shirt that was
bleached almost to an antiseptic gray by the daily laundering to which he had
it subjected. He was like a man who had grown frozen with horror once and had
never come completely unthawed. He sat all tucked up into himself, his slender
shoulders huddled halfway around his head, his suntanned hands with their
luminous silver fingernails massaging the backs of his bare, folded arms gently
as though he were cold. Actually, he was a very warm, compassionate man who
never stopped feeling sorry for himself.
       ‘Why me?’ was his constant lament, and the question was a
good one.
       Yossarian knew it was a good one because Yossarian was a
collector of good questions and had used them to disrupt the educational
sessions Clevinger had once conducted two nights a week in Captain Black’s
intelligence tent with the corporal in eyeglasses who everybody knew was
probably a subversive. Captain Black knew he was a subversive because he wore
eyeglasses and used words like panacea and utopia, and because he disapproved
of Adolf Hitler, who had done such a great job of combating un-American
activities in Germany. Yossarian attended the educational sessions because he
wanted to find out why so many people were working so hard to kill him. A
handful of other men were also interested, and the questions were many and good
when Clevmger and the subversive corporal finished and made the mistake of
asking if there were any.
       ‘Who is Spain?’
       ‘Why is Hitler?’
       ‘When is right?’
       ‘Where was that stooped and mealy-colored old man I used to
call Poppa when the merry-go-round broke down?’
       ‘How was trump at Munich?’
       ‘Ho-ho beriberi.’ and ‘Balls!’ all rang out in rapid
succession, and then there was Yossarian with the question that had no answer:
‘Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?’ The question upset them, because
Snowden had been killed over Avignon when Dobbs went crazy in mid-air and
seized the controls away from Huple.
       The corporal played it dumb. ‘What?’ he asked.
       ‘Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?’
       ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’
       ‘Où sont les Neigedens d’antan?’ Yossarian said to
make it easier for him.
       ‘Parlez en anglais, for Christ’s sake,’ said the corporal.
‘Je ne parle pas français.’
       ‘Neither do I,’ answered Yossarian, who was ready to pursue
him through all the words in the world to wring the knowledge from him if he
could, but Clevinger intervened, pale, thin, and laboring for breath, a humid
coating of tears already glistening in his undernourished eyes.
       Group Headquarters was alarmed, for there was no telling what
people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted
to. Colonel Cathcart sent Colonel Korn to stop it, and Colonel Korn succeeded with
a rule governing the asking of questions. Colonel Korn’s rule was a stroke of
genius, Colonel Korn explained in his report to Colonel Cathcart. Under Colonel
Korn’s rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never
did. Soon the only people attending were those who never asked questions, and
the sessions were discontinued altogether, since Clevinger, the corporal and
Colonel Korn agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate
people who never questioned anything.
       Colonel Cathcart and Lieutenant Colonel Korn lived and worked
in the