Catch-22 - Heller, Joseph [18]
‘It was a godsend,’ Doc Daneeka confessed solemnly. ‘Most of the other doctors were soon in the service, and things picked up overnight. The corner location really started paying off, and I soon found myself handling more patients than I could handle competently. I upped my kickback fee with those two drugstores. The beauty parlors were good for two, three abortions a week. Things couldn’t have been better, and then look what happened. They had to send a guy from the draft board around to look me over. I was Four-F. I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service. You’d think my word would be enough, wouldn’t you, since I was a doctor in good standing with my county medical society and with my local Better Business Bureau. But no, it wasn’t, and they sent this guy around just to make sure I really did have one leg amputated at the hip and was helplessly bedridden with incurable rheumatoid arthritis. Yossarian, we live in an age of distrust and deteriorating spiritual values. It’s a terrible thing,’ Doc Daneeka protested in a voice quavering with strong emotion. ‘It’s a terrible thing when even the word of a licensed physician is suspected by the country he loves.’ Doc Daneeka had been drafted and shipped to Pianosa as a flight surgeon, even though he was terrified of flying.
‘I don’t have to go looking for trouble in an airplane,’ he noted, blinking his beady, brown, offended eyes myopically. ‘It comes looking for me. Like that virgin I’m telling you about that couldn’t have a baby.’
‘What virgin?’ Yossarian asked. ‘I thought you were telling me about some newlyweds.’
‘That’s the virgin I’m telling you about. They were just a couple of young kids, and they’d been married, oh, a little over a year when they came walking into my office without an appointment. You should have seen her. She was so sweet and young and pretty. She even blushed when I asked about her periods. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving that girl. She was built like a dream and wore a chain around her neck with a medal of Saint Anthony hanging down inside the most beautiful bosom I never saw. “It must be a terrible temptation for Saint Anthony,” I joked—just to put her at ease, you know. “Saint Anthony?” her husband said. “Who’s Saint Anthony?” “Ask your wife,” I told him. “She can tell you who Saint Anthony is.” “Who is Saint Anthony?” he asked her. “Who?” she wanted to know. “Saint Anthony,” he told her. “Saint Anthony?” she said. “Who’s Saint Anthony?” When I got a good look at her inside my examination room I found she was still a virgin. I spoke to her husband alone while she was pulling her girdle back on and hooking it onto her stockings. “Every night,” he boasted. A real wise guy, you know. “I never miss a night,” he boasted. He meant it, too. “I even been puttin’ it to her mornings before the breakfasts she makes me before we go to work,” he boasted. There was only one explanation. When I had them both together again I gave them a demonstration of intercourse with the rubber models I’ve got in my office. I’ve got these rubber models in my office with all the reproductive organs of both sexes that I keep locked up in separate cabinets to avoid a scandal. I mean I used to have them. I don’t have anything any more, not even a practice. The only thing I have now is this low temperature that I’m really starting to worry about. Those two kids I’ve got working for me in the medical tent aren’t worth a damn as diagnosticians. All they know how to do is complain. They think they’ve got troubles? What about me? They should have been in my office