‘That’s just what we’re going to find out,’ threatened the colonel.
‘Talk, Chaplain.’
The chaplain looked from one to the other of the two men with rising doubt and hysteria.
‘That handwriting is mine,’ he maintained passionately.
‘Where else is my handwriting, if that isn’t it?’
‘Right here,’ answered the colonel.
And looking very superior, he tossed down on the table a photostatic copy of a piece of V mail in which everything but the salutation ‘Dear Mary’ had been blocked out and on which the censoring officer had written, ‘I long for you tragically.
R. O.
Shipman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.’
The colonel smiled scornfully as he watched the chaplain’s face turn crimson.
‘Well, Chaplain? Do you know who wrote that?’
The chaplain took a long moment to reply; he had recognized Yossarian’s handwriting.
‘No.’
‘You can read, though, can’t you?’ the colonel persevered sarcastically.
‘The author signed his name.’
‘That’s my name there.’
‘Then you wrote it.
Q.E.D.’
‘But I didn’t write it.
That isn’t my handwriting, either.’
‘Then you signed your name in somebody else’s handwriting again,’ the colonel retorted with a shrug.
‘That’s all that means.’
‘Oh, this is ridiculous!’ the chaplain shouted, suddenly losing all patience.
He jumped to his feet in a blazing fury, both fists clenched.
‘I’m not going to stand for this any longer! Do you hear?
Twelve men were just killed, and I have no time for these silly questions.
You’ve no right to keep me here, and I’m just not going to stand for it.’
Without saying a word, the colonel pushed the chaplain’s chest hard and knocked him back down into the chair, and the chaplain was suddenly weak and very much afraid again.
The major picked up the length of rubber hose and began tapping it menacingly against his open palm.
The colonel lifted the box of matches, took one out and held it poised against the striking surface, watching with glowering eyes for the chaplain’s next sign of defiance.
The chaplain was pale and almost too petrified to move.
The bright glare of the spotlight made him turn away finally; the dripping water was louder and almost unbearably irritating.
He wished they would tell him what they wanted so that he would know what to confess.
He waited tensely as the third officer, at a signal from the colonel, ambled over from the wall and seated himself on the table just a few inches away from the chaplain.
His face was expressionless, his eyes penetrating and cold.
‘Turn off the light,’ he said over his shoulder in a low, calm voice.
‘It’s very annoying.’
The chaplain gave him a small smile of gratitude.
‘Thank you, sir.
And the drip too, please.’
‘Leave the drip,’ said the officer.
‘That doesn’t bother me.’
He tugged up the legs of his trousers a bit, as though to preserve their natty crease.
‘Chaplain,’ he asked casually, ‘of what religious persuasion are you?’
‘I’m an Anabaptist, sir.’
‘That’s a pretty suspicious religion, isn’t it?’
‘Suspicious?’ inquired the chaplain in a kind of innocent daze.
‘Why, sir?’
‘Well, I don’t know a thing about it.
You’ll have to admit that, won’t you?