Yossarian was flabbergasted.
His leg went abruptly to sleep. McWatt had started to climb and was yelping over the intercom for instructions.
Yossarian sprang forward to see where they were and remained in the same place. He was unable to move.
Then he realized he was sopping wet.
He looked down at his crotch with a sinking, sick sensation.
A wild crimson blot was crawling upward rapidly along his shirt front like an enormous sea monster rising to devour him.
He was hit!
Separate trickles of blood spilled to a puddle on the floor through one saturated trouser leg like countless unstoppable swarms of wriggling red worms.
His heart stopped.
A second solid jolt struck the plane.
Yossarian shuddered with revulsion at the queer sight of his wound and screamed at Aarfy for help.
‘I lost my balls!
Aarfy, I lost my balls!’
Aarfy didn’t hear, and Yossarian bent forward and tugged at his arm. ‘Aarfy, help me,’ he pleaded, almost weeping,
‘I’m hit!
I’m hit!’
Aarfy turned slowly with a bland, quizzical grin.
‘What?’
‘I’m hit, Aarfy!
Help me!’
Aarfy grinned again and shrugged amiably.
‘I can’t hear you,’ he said.
‘Can’t you see me?’ Yossarian cried incredulously, and he pointed to the deepening pool of blood he felt splashing down all around him and spreading out underneath.
‘I’m wounded!
Help me, for God’s sake!
Aarfy, help me!’
‘I still can’t hear you,’ Aarfy complained tolerantly, cupping his podgy hand behind the blanched corolla of his ear.
‘What did you say?’ Yossarian answered in a collapsing voice, weary suddenly of shouting so much, of the whole frustrating, exasperating, ridiculous situation.
He was dying, and no one took notice. ‘Never mind.’
‘What?’ Aarfy shouted.
‘I said I lost my balls!
Can’t you hear me?
I’m wounded in the groin!’
‘I still can’t hear you,’ Aaxfy chided.
‘I said never mind!’ Yossarian screamed with a trapped feeling of terror and began to shiver, feeling very cold suddenly and very weak.
Aarfy shook his head regretfully again and lowered his obscene, lactescent ear almost directly into Yossarian’s face.
‘You’ll just have to speak up, my friend.
You’ll just have to speak up.’
‘Leave me alone, you bastard!
You dumb, insensitive bastard, leave me alone!’
Yossarian sobbed.
He wanted to pummel Aarfy, but lacked the strength to lift his arms.
He decided to sleep instead and keeled over sideways into a dead faint.
He was wounded in the thigh, and when he recovered consciousness he found McWatt on both knees taking care of him. He was relieved, even though he still saw Aarfy’s bloated cherub’s face hanging down over McWatt’s shoulder with placid interest.
Yossarian smiled feebly at McWatt, feeling ill, and asked, ‘Who’s minding the store?’ McWatt gave no sign that he heard.
With growing horror, Yossarian gathered in breath and repeated the words as loudly as he could. McWatt looked up.
‘Christ, I’m glad you’re still alive!’ he exclaimed, heaving an enormous sigh.
The good-humored, friendly crinkles about his eyes were white with tension and oily with grime as he kept unrolling an interminable bandage around the bulky cotton compress Yossarian felt strapped burdensomely to the inside of one thigh.
‘Nately’s at the controls.
The poor kid almost started bawling when he heard you were hit.