‘A virgin might take a little time.
But if he waits at the bus terminal where the young farm girls looking for work arrive, I—’
‘Luigi, you still don’t understand,’ Milo snapped with such brusque impatience that the police commissioner’s face flushed and he jumped to attention and began buttoning his uniform in confusion.
‘This girl is a friend, an old friend of the family, and we want to help her.
She’s only a child.
She’s all alone in this city somewhere, and we have to find her before somebody harms her.
Now do you understand?
Luigi, this is very important to me.
I have a daughter the same age as that little girl, and nothing in the world means more to me right now than saving that poor child before it’s too late.
Will you help?’
‘Si, Marchese, now I understand,’ said Luigi.
‘And I will do everything in my power to find her.
But tonight I have almost no men.
Tonight all my men are busy trying to break up the traffic in illegal tobacco.’
‘Illegal tobacco?’ asked Milo. ‘ Milo,’ Yossarian bleated faintly with a sinking heart, sensing at once that all was lost.
‘Si, Marchese,’ said Luigi.
‘The profit in illegal tobacco is so high that the smuggling is almost impossible to control.’
‘Is there really that much profit in illegal tobacco?’
Milo inquired with keen interest, his rust-colored eyebrows arching avidly and his nostrils sniffing. ‘ Milo,’ Yossarian called to him.
‘Pay attention to me, will you?’
‘Si, Marchese,’ Luigi answered.
‘The profit in illegal tobacco is very high.
The smuggling is a national scandal, Marchese, truly a national disgrace.’
‘Is that a fact?’ Milo observed with a preoccupied smile and started toward the door as though in a spell. ‘ Milo!’
Yossarian yelled, and bounded forward impulsively to intercept him. ‘ Milo, you’ve got to help me.’
‘Illegal tobacco,’ Milo explained to him with a look of epileptic lust, struggling doggedly to get by.
‘Let me go.
I’ve got to smuggle illegal tobacco.’
‘Stay here and help me find her,’ pleaded Yossarian.
‘You can smuggle illegal tobacco tomorrow.’
But Milo was deaf and kept pushing forward, nonviolently but irresistibly, sweating, his eyes, as though he were in the grip of a blind fixation, burning feverishly, and his twitching mouth slavering.
He moaned calmly as though in remote, instinctive distress and kept repeating, ‘Illegal tobacco, illegal tobacco.’
Yossarian stepped out of the way with resignation finally when he saw it was hopeless to try to reason with him.
Milo was gone like a shot.
The commissioner of police unbuttoned his tunic again and looked at Yossarian with contempt.
‘What do you want here?’ he asked coldly.
‘Do you want me to arrest you?’
Yossarian walked out of the office and down the stairs into the dark, tomblike street, passing in the hall the stout woman with warts and two chins, who was already on her way back in.
There was no sign of Milo outside.
There were no lights in any of the windows.
The deserted sidewalk rose steeply and continuously for several blocks.
He could see the glare of a broad avenue at the top of the long cobblestone incline. The police station was almost at the bottom; the yellow bulbs at the entrance sizzled in the dampness like wet torches.
A frigid, fine rain was falling.
He began walking slowly, pushing uphill.
Soon he came to a quiet, cozy, inviting restaurant with red velvet drapes in the windows and a blue neon sign near the door that said: TONY’S RESTAURANT FINE FOOD AND DRINK. KEEP OUT.
The words on the blue neon sign surprised him mildly for only an instant.
Nothing warped seemed bizarre any more in his strange, distorted surroundings.
The tops of the sheer buildings slanted in weird, surrealistic perspective, and the street seemed tilted.
He raised the collar of his warm woolen coat and hugged it around him.
The night was raw.