‘That Yossarian,’ the two officers laughed, shaking their heads, and got another ball from the box on the shelf.
‘That Yossarian,’ Yossarian answered them.
‘Yossarian,’ Nately whispered cautioningly.
‘You see what I mean?’ asked Clevinger.
The officers laughed again when they heard Yossarian mimicking them.
‘That Yossarian,’ they said more loudly.
‘That Yossarian,’ Yossarian echoed.
‘Yossarian, please,’ Nately pleaded.
‘You see what I mean?’ asked Clevinger.
‘He has antisocial aggressions.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Dunbar told Clevinger.
Dunbar liked Clevinger because Clevinger annoyed him and made the time go slow.
‘Appleby isn’t even here,’ Clevinger pointed out triumphantly to Yossarian.
‘Who said anything about Appleby?’ Yossarian wanted to know.
‘Colonel Cathcart isn’t here, either.’
‘Who said anything about Colonel Cathcart?’
‘What son of a bitch do you hate, then?’
‘What son of a bitch is here?’
‘I’m not going to argue with you,’ Clevinger decided.
‘You don’t know who you hate.’
‘Whoever’s trying to poison me,’ Yossarian told him.
‘Nobody’s trying to poison you.’
‘They poisoned my food twice, didn’t they?
Didn’t they put poison in my food during Ferrara and during the Great Big Siege of Bologna?’
‘They put poison in everybody’s food,’ Clevinger explained.
‘And what difference does that make?’
‘And it wasn’t even poison!’ Clevinger cried heatedly, growing more emphatic as he grew more confused.
As far back as Yossarian could recall, he explained to Clevinger with a patient smile, somebody was always hatching a plot to kill him.
There were people who cared for him and people who didn’t, and those who didn’t hated him and were out to get him.
They hated him because he was Assyrian.
But they couldn’t touch him, he told Clevinger, because he had a sound mind in a pure body and was as strong as an ox.
They couldn’t touch him because he was Tarzan, Mandrake, Flash Gordon.
He was Bill Shakespeare.
He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees.
He was miracle ingredient Z-247.
He was—’Crazy!’ Clevinger interrupted, shrieking.
‘That’s what you are! Crazy! ‘—immense.
I’m a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger.
I’m a bona fide supraman.’
‘Superman?’ Clevinger cried.
‘Superman?’
‘Supraman,’ Yossarian corrected.
‘Hey, fellas, cut it out,’ Nately begged with embarrassment.
‘Everybody’s looking at us.’
‘You’re crazy,’ Clevinger shouted vehemently, his eyes filling with tears.
‘You’ve got a Jehovah complex.’
‘I think everyone is Nathaniel.’
Clevinger arrested himself in mid-declamation, suspiciously.
‘Who’s Nathaniel?’
‘Nathaniel who?’ inquired Yossarian innocently.