"That's all right, pal."
"Sure, pal."
"Thanks, pal."
"Don't mention it, pal."
"So long, pal."
Yossarian waved goodbye fondly to his new pals and sauntered out onto the balcony corridor, almost bursting into song the instant he was alone. He was home free: he had pulled it off; his act of rebellion had succeeded; he was safe, and he had nothing to be ashamed of to anyone. He started toward the staircase with a jaunty and exhilarated air. A private in green fatigues saluted him. Yossarian returned the salute happily, staring at the private with curiosity. He looked strangely familiar. When Yossarian returned the salute, the private in green fatigues turned suddenly into Nately's whore and lunged at him murderously with a bone-handled kitchen knife that caught him in the side below his upraised arm. Yossarian sank to the floor with a shriek, shutting his eyes in overwhelming terror as he saw the girl lift the knife to strike at him again. He was already unconscious when Colonel Korn and Colonel Cathcart dashed out of the office and saved his life by frightening her away.
41 SNOWDEN
"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 to operate 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 the bleeding, 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 were ready to begin cutting him.
"Another county heard from," complained the first doctor sarcastically. "Is he going to keep talking that way while 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 that pressed down very close to Yossarian and radiated scorching heat like the bottom of a huge frying pan. "Where were you born?"
The fat, gruff colonel reminded Yossarian of the fat, gruff colonel who had interrogated the chaplain and found him guilty. Yossarian stared up at him through a glassy film. The cloying scents of formaldehyde and alcohol sweetened 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 to get 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 help you. 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 he was rolled away slowly into a stuffy, dark room with searing spotlights overhead in which the cloying smell of formaldehyde and sweet alcohol was even stronger. The pleasant, permeating stink was intoxicating. He smelled ether too and heard glass tinkling. He listened with secret, egotistical mirth to the husky breathing of the two doctors. 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. He keeps 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 I wash 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 in ether fumes. Colonel Korn was there at his bedside, waiting calmly in a chair in his baggy, wool, olive-drab shirt and trousers. A bland, phlegmatic smile hung on his brown face with its heavy-bearded cheeks, and he was buffing the facets of his bald head gently with the palms of both hands. He bent forward chuckling when Yossarian awoke, and assured him in the friendliest tones that the deal they had made was still on if Yossarian didn't die. Yossarian vomited, and Colonel Korn shot to his feet at the first cough and fled in disgust, so it seemed indeed that there was a silver lining to every cloud, Yossarian reflected, as he drifted back into a suffocating daze. A hand with sharp fingers shook him awake roughly. He turned and opened his eyes and saw a strange 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 and asked how he was feeling. Aarfy looked puzzled when Yossarian inquired why he was not in jail. Yossarian shut his eyes to make him go away. When he opened them, Aarfy was gone and the chaplain was there. Yossarian broke into laughter when he spied the chaplain's cheerful grin and asked him what in the hell he was so happy about.
"I'm happy about you," the chaplain replied with excited candor and joy. "I heard at Group that you were very seriously injured and that you would have to be sent home if you lived. Colonel Korn said your condition was critical. But I've just learned from one of the doctors that your wound is really a very slight one and that you'll probably 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 in the 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 I pray 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 to do."
"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 that is good." He bent forward impulsively with awkward solicitude. "Yossarian, is there anything I can do for you while 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, or anything at all. I wish there was something I could do to make you happy. You know, Yossarian, we're all very proud 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 have stabbed 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 trying to 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 Colonel Korn 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 things about 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's terrible! 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 the pillow. "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 lowered himself 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 deciding the 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 do it."
"But you must do it," the chaplain insisted, bending forward with concern. "Really, you must. I had no right to influence 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 want on my record."
The chaplain returned to the subject with caution. "What will you do instead? You can't let them put you in prison."
"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 man came 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 most malignant manner I ever saw. I wonder who my pal is."
"I like to think that I'm your pal, Yossarian," the chaplain said with humble sincerity. "And they certainly have got me. They've got my number and they've got me under surveillance, and they've got me right where they want me. That's what they told me at my interrogation."
