‘They’ve got the doors to the medical tents nailed shut in the other squadrons,’ Dunbar remarked.
‘If anyone sick walks through my door I’m going to ground him,’ Dr. Stubbs vowed.
‘I don’t give a damn what they say.’
‘You can’t ground anyone,’ Dunbar reminded.
‘Don’t you know the orders?’
‘I’ll knock him flat on his ass with an injection and really ground him.’ Dr. Stubbs laughed with sardonic amusement at the prospect.
‘They think they can order sick call out of existence. The bastards.
Ooops, there it goes again.’
The rain began falling again, first in the trees, then in the mud puddles, then, faintly, like a soothing murmur, on the tent top.
‘Everything’s wet,’ Dr. Stubbs observed with revulsion.
‘Even the latrines and urinals are backing up in protest.
The whole goddam world smells like a charnel house.’
The silence seemed bottomless when he stopped talking.
Night fell.
There was a sense of vast isolation.
‘Turn on the light,’ Dunbar suggested.
‘There is no light.
I don’t feel like starting my generator.
I used to get a big kick out of saving people’s lives.
Now I wonder what the hell’s the point, since they all have to die anyway.
‘Oh, there’s a point, all right,’ Dunbar assured him.
‘Is there?
What is the point?’
‘The point is to keep them from dying for as long as you can.’
‘Yeah, but what’s the point, since they all have to die anyway?’
‘The trick is not to think about that.’
‘Never mind the trick. What the hell’s the point?’
Dunbar pondered in silence for a few moments.
‘Who the hell knows?’
Dunbar didn’t know. Bologna should have exulted Dunbar, because the minutes dawdled and the hours dragged like centuries.
Instead it tortured him, because he knew he was going to be killed.
‘Do you really want some more codeine?’ Dr. Stubbs asked.
‘It’s for my friend Yossarian.
He’s sure he’s going to be killed.’
‘Yossarian?
Who the hell is Yossarian?
What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian, anyway?
Isn’t he the one who got drunk and started that fight with Colonel Korn at the officers’ club the other night?’
‘That’s right.
He’s Assyrian.’
‘That crazy bastard.’
‘He’s not so crazy,’ Dunbar said.
‘He swears he’s not going to fly to Bologna.’
‘That’s just what I mean,’ Dr. Stubbs answered.
‘That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left.’
Captain Black Corporal Kolodny learned about it first in a phone call from Group and was so shaken by the news that he crossed the intelligence tent on tiptoe to Captain Black, who was resting drowsily with his bladed shins up on the desk, and relayed the information to him in a shocked whisper.
Captain Black brightened immediately. ‘ Bologna?’ he exclaimed with delight.
‘Well, I’ll be damned.’
He broke into loud laughter. ‘ Bologna, huh?’
He laughed again and shook his head in pleasant amazement.