His dress cap was askew and in danger of falling.
Milo caught it just in time when it began slipping.
Globules of perspiration glistened like transparent pearls around his mustache and swelled like opaque blisters under his eyes.
Yossarian watched him impassively.
Cautiously Milo worked himself around in a half circle so that he could face Yossarian. He unwrapped tissue paper from something soft, round and brown and handed it to Yossarian.
‘Please taste this and let me know what you think.
I’d like to serve it to the men.’
‘What is it?’ asked Yossarian, and took a big bite.
‘Chocolate-covered cotton.’
Yossarian gagged convulsively and sprayed his big mouthful of chocolate-covered cotton right into Milo’s face.
‘Here, take it back!’ he spouted angrily.
‘Jesus Christ! Have you gone crazy?
You didn’t even take the goddam seeds out.’
‘Give it a chance, will you?’ Milo begged.
‘It can’t be that bad. Is it really that bad?’
‘It’s even worse.’
‘But I’ve got to make the mess halls feed it to the men.’
‘They’ll never be able to swallow it.’
‘They’ve got to swallow it,’ Milo ordained with dictatorial grandeur, and almost broke his neck when he let go with one arm to wave a righteous finger in the air.
‘Come on out here,’ Yossarian invited him.
‘You’ll be much safer, and you can see everything.’
Gripping the bough above with both hands, Milo began inching his way out on the limb sideways with utmost care and apprehension.
His face was rigid with tension, and he sighed with relief when he found himself seated securely beside Yossarian. He stroked the tree affectionately.
‘This is a pretty good tree,’ he observed admiringly with proprietary gratitude.
‘It’s the tree of life,’ Yossarian answered, waggling his toes, ‘and of knowledge of good and evil, too.’
Milo squinted closely at the bark and branches.
‘No it isn’t,’ he replied.
‘It’s a chestnut tree.
I ought to know.
I sell chestnuts.’
‘Have it your way.’
They sat in the tree without talking for several seconds, their legs dangling and their hands almost straight up on the bough above, the one completely nude but for a pair of crepe-soled sandals, the other completely dressed in a coarse olive-drab woolen uniform with his tie knotted tight.
Milo studied Yossarian diffidently through the corner of his eye, hesitating tactfully.
‘I want to ask you something,’ he said at last.
‘You don’t have any clothes on. I don’t want to butt in or anything, but I just want to know. Why aren’t you wearing your uniform?’
‘I don’t want to.’
Milo nodded rapidly like a sparrow pecking.
‘I see, I see,’ he stated quickly with a look of vivid confusion.
‘I understand perfectly.
I heard Appleby and Captain Black say you had gone crazy, and I just wanted to find out.’
He hesitated politely again, weighing his next question. ‘Aren’t you ever going to put your uniform on again?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Milo nodded with spurious vim to indicate he still understood and then sat silent, ruminating gravely with troubled misgiving.
A scarlet-crested bird shot by below, brushing sure dark wings against a quivering bush.
Yossarian and Milo were covered in their bower by tissue-thin tiers of sloping green and largely surrounded by other gray chestnut trees and a silver spruce.
The sun was high overhead in a vast sapphire-blue sky beaded with low, isolated, puffy clouds of dry and immaculate white.
There was no breeze, and the leaves about them hung motionless.
The shade was feathery.
Everything was at peace but Milo, who straightened suddenly with a muffled cry and began pointing excitedly.
‘Look at that!’ he exclaimed in alarm.