‘They couldn’t just barge in here and chase everyone out.’
‘No reason,’ wailed the old woman. ‘No reason.’
‘What right did they have?’
‘Catch-22.’
‘What?’
Yossarian froze in his tracks with fear and alarm and felt his whole body begin to tingle.
‘What did you say?’
‘Catch-22’ the old woman repeated, rocking her head up and down. ‘Catch-22.
Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest.
‘How did you know it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?’
‘The soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. The girls were crying. "Did we do anything wrong?" they said. The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. "Then why are you chasing us out?" the girls said. "Catch-22," the men said. "What right do you have?" the girls said. "Catch-22," the men said. All they kept saying was "Catch-22, Catch-22." What does it mean, Catch-22? What is Catch-22?’
‘Didn’t they show it to you?’ Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress.
‘Didn’t you even make them read it?’
‘They don’t have to show us Catch-22,’ the old woman answered.
‘The law says they don’t have to.’
‘What law says they don’t have to?’
‘Catch-22.’
‘Oh, God damn!’ Yossarian exclaimed bitterly.
‘I bet it wasn’t even really there.’
He stopped walking and glanced about the room disconsolately.
‘Where’s the old man?’
‘Gone,’ mourned the old woman.
‘Gone?’
‘Dead,’ the old woman told him, nodding in emphatic lament, pointing to her head with the flat of her hand.
‘Something broke in here.
One minute he was living, one minute he was dead.’ ‘But he can’t be dead!’ Yossarian cried, ready to argue insistently. But of course he knew it was true, knew it was logical and true; once again the old man had marched along with the majority.
Yossarian turned away and trudged through the apartment with a gloomy scowl, peering with pessimistic curiosity into all the rooms.
Everything made of glass had been smashed by the men with the clubs.
Torn drapes and bedding lay dumped on the floor.
Chairs, tables and dressers had been overturned.
Everything breakable had been broken.
The destruction was total.
No wild vandals could have been more thorough.
Every window was smashed, and darkness poured like inky clouds into each room through the shattered panes.
Yossarian could imagine the heavy, crashing footfalls of the tall M.P.s in the hard white hats.
He could picture the fiery and malicious exhilaration with which they had made their wreckage, and their sanctimonious, ruthless sense of right and dedication.
All the poor young girls were gone.
Everyone was gone but the weeping old woman in the bulky brown and gray sweaters and black head shawl, and soon she too would be gone.
‘Gone,’ she grieved, when he walked back in, before he could even speak.
‘Who will take care of me now?’
Yossarian ignored the question.
‘Nately’s girl friend—did anyone hear from her?’ he asked.
‘Gone.’
‘I know she’s gone.
But did anyone hear from her?
Does anyone know where she is?’
‘Gone.’
‘The little sister. What happened to her?’
‘Gone.’ The old woman’s tone had not changed.