Catch-22 - Heller, Joseph [152]
‘No, sir.’ The chaplain shook his head, feeling despicably remiss because he did not know how to delegate responsibility and had no initiative, and because he really had been tempted to disagree with the colonel. His mind was a shambles. They were shooting skeet outside, and every time a gun was fired his senses were jarred. He could not adjust to the sound of the shots. He was surrounded by bushels of plum tomatoes and was almost convinced that he had stood in Colonel Cathcart’s office on some similar occasion deep in the past and had been surrounded by those same bushels of those same plum tomatoes. Déjà vu again. The setting seemed so familiar; yet it also seemed so distant. His clothes felt grimy and old, and he was deathly afraid he smelled.
‘You take things too seriously, Chaplain,’ Colonel Cathcart told him bluntly with an air of adult objectivity. ‘That’s another one of the things that’s wrong with you. That long face of yours gets everybody depressed. Let me see you laugh once in a while. Come on, Chaplain. You give me a belly laugh now and I’ll give you a whole bushel of plum tomatoes.’ He waited a second or two, watching, and then chortled victoriously. ‘You see, Chaplain, I’m right. You can’t give me a belly laugh, can you?’
‘No, sir,’ admitted the chaplain meekly, swallowing slowly with a visible effort. ‘Not right now. I’m very thirsty.’
‘Then get yourself a drink. Colonel Korn keeps some bourbon in his desk. You ought to try dropping around the officers’ club with us some evening just to have yourself a little fun. Try getting lit once in a while. I hope you don’t feel you’re better than the rest of us just because you’re a professional man.’
‘Oh, no, sir,’ the chaplain assured him with embarrassment. ‘As a matter of fact, I have been going to the officers’ club the past few evenings.’
‘You’re only a captain, you know,’ Colonel Cathcart continued, paying no attention to the chaplain’s remark. ‘You may be a professional man, but you’re still only a captain.’
‘Yes, sir. I know.’
‘That’s fine, then. It’s just as well you didn’t laugh before. I wouldn’t have given you the plum tomatoes anyway. Corporal Whitcomb tells me you took a plum tomato when you were in here this morning.’
‘This morning? But, sir! You gave it to me.’ Colonel Cathcart cocked his head with suspicion. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t give it to you, did I? I merely said you took it. I don’t see why you’ve got such a guilty conscience if you really didn’t steal it. Did I give it to you?’
‘Yes, sir. I swear you did.’
‘Then I’ll just have to take your word for it. Although I can’t imagine why I’d want to give you a plum tomato.’ Colonel Cathcart transferred a round glass paperweight competently from the right edge of his desk to the left edge and picked up a sharpened pencil. ‘Okay. Chaplain, I’ve got a lot of important work to do now if you’re through. You let me know when Corporal Whitcomb has sent out about a dozen of those letters and we’ll get in touch with the editors of The Saturday Evening Post.’ A sudden inspiration made his face brighten. ‘Say! I think I’ll volunteer the group for Avignon again. That should speed things up!’
‘For Avignon?’ The chaplain’s heart missed a beat, and all his flesh began to prickle and creep.
‘That’s right,’ the colonel explained exuberantly. ‘The sooner we get some casualties, the sooner we can make some progress on this. I’d like to get in the Christmas issue if we can. I imagine the circulation is higher then.’ And to the chaplain’s horror, the colonel lifted the phone to volunteer the group for Avignon and tried to kick him out of the officers’ club again that very same night a moment before Yossarian rose up drunkenly, knocking over his chair, to start