‘That’s exactly what I had in mind, sir, when I ordered him to come here,’ Colonel Cathcart said carefully, and threw his arm familiarly around the chaplain’s shoulders as he walked him off into a corner to order him in a cold undertone to start reporting for duty at the officers’ club every evening to mingle with the men while they were drinking and gambling so that he could get to understand them and win their confidence.
The chaplain agreed and did report for duty to the officers’ club every night to mingle with men who wanted to avoid him, until the evening the vicious fist fight broke out at the ping-pong table and Chief White Halfoat whirled without provocation and punched Colonel Moodus squarely in the nose, knocking Colonel Moodus down on the seat of his pants and making General Dreedle roar with lusty, unexpected laughter until he spied the chaplain standing close by gawking at him grotesquely in tortured wonder.
General Dreedle froze at the sight of him.
He glowered at the chaplain with swollen fury for a moment, his good humor gone, and turned back toward the bar disgruntedly, rolling from side to side like a sailor on his short bandy legs.
Colonel Cathcart cantered fearfully along behind, glancing anxiously about in vain for some sign of help from Colonel Korn.
‘That’s a fine thing,’ General Dreedle growled at the bar, gripping his empty shot glass in his burly hand.
‘That’s really a fine thing, when a man of God begins hanging around a place like this with a bunch of dirty drunks and gamblers.’
Colonel Cathcart sighed with relief.
‘Yes, sir,’ he exclaimed proudly.
‘It certainly is a fine thing.’
‘Then why the hell don’t you do something about it?’
‘Sir?’ Colonel Cathcart inquired, blinking.
‘Do you think it does you credit to have your chaplain hanging around here every night?
He’s in here every goddam time I come.’
‘You’re right, sir, absolutely right,’ Colonel Cathcart responded.
‘It does me no credit at all. And I am going to do something about it, this very minute.’
‘Aren’t you the one who ordered him to come here?’
‘No, sir, that was Colonel Korn.
I intend to punish him severely, too.’
‘If he wasn’t a chaplain,’ General Dreedle muttered, ‘I’d have him taken outside and shot.’
‘He’s not a chaplain, sir.’ Colonel Cathcart advised helpfully.
‘Isn’t he?
Then why the hell does he wear that cross on his collar if he’s not a chaplain?’
‘He doesn’t wear a cross on his collar, sir.
He wears a silver leaf.
He’s a lieutenant colonel.’
‘You’ve got a chaplain who’s a lieutenant colonel?’ inquired General Dreedle with amazement.
‘Oh, no, sir.
My chaplain is only a captain.’
‘Then why the hell does he wear a silver leaf on his collar if he’s only a captain?’
‘He doesn’t wear a silver leaf on his collar, sir.
He wears a cross.’
‘Go away from me now, you son of a bitch,’ said General Dreedle.
‘Or I’ll have you taken outside and shot!’
‘Yes, sir.’
Colonel Cathcart went away from General Dreedle with a gulp and kicked the chaplain out of the officers’ club, and it was exactly the way it almost was two months later after the chaplain had tried to persuade Colonel Cathcart to rescind his order increasing the number of missions to sixty and had failed abysmally in that endeavor too, and the chaplain was ready now to capitulate to despair entirely but was restrained by the memory of his wife, whom he loved and missed so pathetically with such sensual and exalted ardor, and by the lifelong trust he had placed in the wisdom and justice of an immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, humane, universal, anthropomorphic, English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon, pro-American God, which had begun to waver.
So many things were testing his faith.
There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans.
Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall?
Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?
Where the devil was heaven?
Was it up?
Down?
There was no up or down in a finite but expanding universe in which even the vast, burning, dazzling, majestic sun was in a state of progressive decay that would eventually destroy the earth too.
There were no miracles; prayers went unanswered, and misfortune tramped with equal brutality on the virtuous and the corrupt; and the chaplain, who had conscience and character, would have yielded to reason and relinquished his belief in the God of his fathers—would truly have resigned both his calling and his commission and taken his chances as a private in the infantry or field artillery, or even, perhaps, as a corporal in the paratroopers—had it not been for such successive mystic phenomena as the naked man in the tree at that poor sergeant’s funeral weeks before and the cryptic, haunting, encouraging promise of the prophet Flume in the forest only that afternoon:
‘Tell them I’ll be back when winter comes.’
Aarfy In a way it was all Yossarian’s fault, for if he had not moved the bomb line during the Big Siege of Bologna, Major—de Coverley might still be around to save him, and if he had not stocked the enlisted men’s apartment with girls who had no other place to live, Nately might never have fallen in love with his whore as she sat naked from the waist down in the room full of grumpy blackjack players who ignored her.
Nately stared at her covertly from his over-stuffed yellow armchair, marveling at the bored, phlegmatic strength with which she accepted the mass rejection.
She yawned, and he was deeply moved. He had never witnessed such heroic poise before. The girl had climbed five steep flights of stairs to sell herself to the group of satiated enlisted men, who had girls living there all around them; none wanted her at any price, not even after she had stripped without real enthusiasm to tempt them with a tall body that was firm and full and truly voluptuous. She seemed more fatigued than disappointed. Now she sat resting in vacuous indolence, watching the card game with dull curiosity as she gathered her recalcitrant energies for the tedious chore of donning the rest of her clothing and going back to work. In a little while she stirred.
A little while later she rose with an unconscious sigh and stepped lethargically into her tight cotton panties and dark skirt, then buckled on her shoes and left.