Catch-22 - Heller, Joseph [51]
‘Yes, sir,’ said the orderly. ‘When should I come here to find out if there’s anything you want me to do for you?’
‘When I’m not here.’
‘Yes, sir. And what should I do?’
‘Whatever I tell you to.’
‘But you won’t be here to tell me. Will you?’
‘No.’
‘Then what should I do?’
‘Whatever has to be done.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That will be all,’ said Major Major.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the orderly. ‘Will that be all?’
‘No,’ said Major Major. ‘Don’t come in to clean, either. Don’t come in for anything unless you’re sure I’m not here.’
‘Yes, sir. But how can I always be sure?’
‘If you’re not sure, just assume that I am here and go away until you are sure. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’m sorry to have to talk to you in this way, but I have to. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, sir.’
‘And thank you. For everything.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘From now on,’ Major Major said to Milo Minderbinder, ‘I’m not going to come to the mess hall any more. I’ll have all my meals brought to me in my trailer.’
‘I think that’s a good idea, sir,’ Milo answered. ‘Now I’ll be able to serve you special dishes that the others will never know about. I’m sure you’ll enjoy them. Colonel Cathcart always does.’
‘I don’t want any special dishes. I want exactly what you serve all the other officers. Just have whoever brings it knock once on my door and leave the tray on the step. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Milo. ‘That’s very clear. I’ve got some live Maine lobsters hidden away that I can serve you tonight with an excellent Roquefort salad and two frozen éclairs that were smuggled out of Paris only yesterday together with an important member of the French underground. Will that do for a start?’
‘No.’
‘Yes, sir. I understand.’ For dinner that night Milo served him broiled Maine lobster with excellent Roquefort salad and two frozen éclairs. Major Major was annoyed. If he sent it back, though, it would only go to waste or to somebody else, and Major Major had a weakness for broiled lobster. He ate with a guilty conscience. The next day for lunch there was terrapin Maryland with a whole quart of Dom Pérignon 1937, and Major Major gulped it down without a thought.
After Milo, there remained only the men in the orderly room, and Major Major avoided them by entering and leaving every time through the dingy celluloid window of his office. The window unbuttoned and was low and large and easy to jump through from either side. He managed the distance between the orderly room and his trailer by darting around the corner of the tent when the coast was clear, leaping down into the railroad ditch and dashing along with head bowed until he attained the sanctuary of the forest. Abreast of his trailer, he left the ditch and wove his way speedily toward home through the dense underbrush, in which the only person he ever encountered was Captain Flume, who, drawn and ghostly, frightened him half to death one twilight by materializing without warning out of a patch of dewberry bushes to complain that Chief White Halfoat had threatened to slit his throat open from ear to ear.
‘If you ever frighten me like that again,’ Major Major told him, ‘I’ll slit your throat open from ear to ear.’ Captain Flume gasped and dissolved right back into the patch of dewberry bushes, and Major Major never set eyes on him again.
When Major Major looked back on what he had accomplished, he was pleased. In the midst of a few foreign acres teeming with more than two hundred people, he had succeeded in becoming a recluse. With a little ingenuity and vision, he had made it all but impossible for anyone in the squadron to talk to him, which was just fine with everyone, he noticed, since no one wanted to talk to him anyway. No one, it turned out, but that madman Yossarian, who brought him down with a flying tackle one day as he was scooting along the bottom of the ditch to his trailer for lunch.
The last person in the squadron Major Major wanted to be brought down with a flying tackle by was Yossarian. There was something inherently disreputable about Yossarian, always carrying on so disgracefully