‘Yeah, gone.’
Captain Black laughed, his bleary eyes narrow with fatigue and his peaked, sharp face sprouting as usual with a sparse reddish-blond stubble. He rubbed the bags under his eyes with both fists.
‘I thought I might as well give the stupid broad another boff just for old times’ sake as long as I was in Rome anyway. You know, just to keep that kid Nately’s body spinning in his grave, ha, ha!
Remember the way I used to needle him?
But the place was empty.’
‘Was there any word from her?’ prodded Yossarian, who had been brooding incessantly about the girl, wondering how much she was suffering, and feeling almost lonely and deserted without her ferocious and unappeasable attacks.
‘There’s no one there,’ Captain Black exclaimed cheerfully, trying to make Yossarian understand.
‘Don’t you understand?
They’re all gone.
The whole place is busted.’
‘Gone?’
‘Yeah, gone.
Flushed right out into the street.’
Captain Black chuckled heartily again, and his pointed Adam’s apple jumped up and down with glee inside his scraggly neck.
‘The joint’s empty.
The M.P.s busted the whole apartment up and drove the whores right out.
Ain’t that a laugh?’
Yossarian was scared and began to tremble.
‘Why’d they do that?’
‘What difference does it make? responded Captain Black with an exuberant gesture.
‘They flushed them right out into the street.
How do you like that?
The whole batch.’
‘What about the kid sister?’
‘Flushed away,’ laughed Captain Black.
‘Flushed away with the rest of the broads.
Right out into the street.’
‘But she’s only a kid!’ Yossarian objected passionately.
‘She doesn’t know anybody else in the whole city. What’s going to happen to her?’
‘What the hell do I care?’ responded Captain Black with an indifferent shrug, and then gawked suddenly at Yossarian with surprise and with a crafty gleam of prying elation.
‘Say, what’s the matter?
If I knew this was going to make you so unhappy, I would have come right over and told you, just to make you eat your liver.
Hey, where are you going?
Come on back!
Come on back here and eat your liver!’
The Eternal City Yossarian was going absent without official leave with Milo, who, as the plane cruised toward Rome, shook his head reproachfully and, with pious lips pulsed, informed Yossarian in ecclesiastical tones that he was ashamed of him.
Yossarian nodded.
Yossarian was making an uncouth spectacle of himself by walking around backward with his gun on his hip and refusing to fly more combat missions, Milo said.
Yossarian nodded.
It was disloyal to his squadron and embarrassing to his superiors.
He was placing Milo in a very uncomfortable position, too.
Yossarian nodded again.
The men were starting to grumble.
It was not fair for Yossarian to think only of his own safety while men like Milo, Colonel Cathcart, Colonel Korn and ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen were willing to do everything they could to win the war.
The men with seventy missions were starring to grumble because they had to fly eighty, and there was a danger some of them might put on guns and begin walking around backward, too.
Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault.
The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
Yossarian kept nodding in the co-pilot’s seat and tried not to listen as Milo prattled on.
Nately’s whore was on his mind, as were Kraft and Orr and Nately and Dunbar, and Kid Sampson and McWatt, and all the poor and stupid and diseased people he had seen in Italy, Egypt and North Africa and knew about in other areas of the world, and Snowden and Nately’s whore’s kid sister were on his conscience, too.
Yossarian thought he knew why Nately’s whore held him responsible for Nately’s death and wanted to kill him.