‘No, I’m not in any trouble,’ Corporal Whitcomb replied with a grin. ‘You are. They’re going to crack down on you for signing Washington Irving’s name to all those letters you’ve been signing Washington Irving’s name to. How do you like that?’
‘I haven’t been signing Washington Irving’s name to any letters,’ said the chaplain.
‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ Corporal Whitcomb answered. ‘I’m not the one you have to convince.’
‘But I’m not lying.’
‘I don’t care whether you’re lying or not. They’re going to get you for intercepting Major Major’s correspondence, too. A lot of that stuff is classified information.’
‘What correspondence?’ asked the chaplain plaintively in rising exasperation. ‘I’ve never even seen any of Major Major’s correspondence.’
‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ Corporal Whitcomb replied. ‘I’m not the one you have to convince.’
‘But I’m not lying!’ protested the chaplain.
‘I don’t see why you have to shout at me,’ Corporal Whitcomb retorted with an injured look. He came away from the center pole and shook his finger at the chaplain for emphasis. ‘I just did you the biggest favor anybody ever did you in your whole life, and you don’t even realize it. Every time he tries to report you to his superiors, somebody up at the hospital censors out the details. He’s been going batty for weeks trying to turn you in. I just put a censor’s okay on his letter without even reading it. That will make a very good impression for you up at C.I.D. headquarters. It will let them know that we’re not the least bit afraid to have the whole truth about you come out.’ The chaplain was reeling with confusion. ‘But you aren’t authorized to censor letters, are you?’
‘Of course not,’ Corporal Whitcomb answered. ‘Only officers are ever authorized to do that. I censored it in your name.’
‘But I’m not authorized to censor letters either. Am I?’
‘I took care of that for you, too,’ Corporal Whitcomb assured him. ‘I signed somebody else’s name for you.’
‘Isn’t that forgery?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that either. The only one who might complain in a case of forgery is the person whose name you forged, and I looked out for your interests by picking a dead man. I used Washington Irving’s name.’ Corporal Whitcomb scrutinized the chaplain’s face closely for some sign of rebellion and then breezed ahead confidently with concealed irony. ‘That was pretty quick thinking on my part, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ the chaplain wailed softly in a quavering voice, squinting with grotesque contortions of anguish and incomprehension. ‘I don’t think I understand all you’ve been telling me. How will it make a good impression for me if you signed Washington Irving’s name instead of my own?’
‘Because they’re convinced that you are Washington Irving. Don’t you see? They’ll know it was you.’
‘But isn’t that the very belief we want to dispel? Won’t this help them prove it?’
‘If I thought you were going to be so stuffy about it, I wouldn’t even have tried to help,’ Corporal Whitcomb declared indignantly, and walked out. A second later he walked back in. ‘I just did you the biggest favor anybody ever did you in your whole life and you don’t even know it. You don’t know how to show your appreciation. That’s another one of the things that’s wrong with you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the chaplain apologized contritely. ‘I really am sorry. It’s just that I’m so completely stunned by all you’re telling me that I don’t even realize what I’m saying. I’m really very grateful to you.’
‘Then how about letting me send out those form letters?’ Corporal Whitcomb demanded immediately. ‘Can I begin working on the first drafts?’ The chaplain’s jaw dropped in astonishment. ‘No, no,’ he groaned. ‘Not now.’ Corporal Whitcomb was incensed. ‘I’m the best friend you’ve got and you don’t even know it,’ he asserted belligerently, and walked out of the chaplain’s tent. He walked back in. ‘I’m on your side and you don’t even realize it. Don’t you know what serious trouble you’re in? That C.I.D. man has gone rushing back to the hospital to write a brand-new report on you about that tomato.’
‘What tomato?’ the chaplain asked, blinking.
‘The plum tomato you were hiding in your hand when you first showed up here. There it is. The tomato you’re still holding in your hand right this very minute!’ The captain unclenched his fingers with surprise and saw that he was still holding the plum tomato he had obtained in Colonel Cathcart’s office. He set it down quickly on the bridge table. ‘I got this tomato from Colonel Cathcart,’ he said, and was struck by how ludicrous his explanation sounded. ‘He insisted I take it.’
‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ Corporal Whitcomb answered. ‘I don’t care whether you stole it from him or not.’
‘Stole it?’ the chaplain exclaimed with amazement. ‘Why should I want to steal a plum tomato?’
‘That’s exactly what had us both stumped,’ said Corporal Whitcomb. ‘And then the C.I.D. man figured out you might have some important secret papers hidden away inside it.’ The chaplain sagged limply beneath the mountainous weight of his despair. ‘I don’t have any important secret papers hidden away inside it,’ he stated simply. ‘I didn’t even want it to begin with. Here, you can have it and see for yourself.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘Please take it away,’ the chaplain pleaded in a voice that was barely audible. ‘I want to be rid of it.’
‘I don’t want it,’ Corporal Whitcomb snapped again, and stalked out with an angry face, suppressing a smile of great jubilation at having forged a powerful new alliance with the C.I.D. man and at having succeeded again in convincing the chaplain that he was really displeased.
Poor Whitcomb, sighed the chaplain, and blamed himself for his assistant’s malaise. He sat mutely in a ponderous, stultifying melancholy, waiting expectantly for Corporal Whitcomb to walk back in. He was disappointed as he heard the peremptory crunch of Corporal Whitcomb’s footsteps recede into silence. There was nothing he wanted to do next. He decided to pass up lunch for a Milky Way and a Baby Ruth from his foot locker and a few swallows of luke-warm water from his canteen. He felt himself surrounded by dense, overwhelming fogs of possibilities in which he could perceive no glimmer of light. He dreaded what Colonel Cathcart would think when the news that he was suspected of being Washington Irving was brought to him, then fell to fretting over what Colonel Cathcart was already thinking about him for even having broached the subject of sixty missions. There was so much unhappiness in the world, he reflected, bowing his head dismally beneath the tragic thought, and there was nothing he could do about anybody’s, least of all his own.
General Dreedle
Colonel Cathcart was not thinking anything at all about the chaplain, but was tangled up in a brand-new, menacing problem of his own: Yossarian!
Yossarian! The mere sound of that execrable, ugly name made his blood run cold and his breath come in labored gasps. The chaplain’s first mention of the name Yossarian! had tolled deep in his memory like a portentous gong. As soon as the latch of the door had clicked shut, the whole humiliating recollection of the naked man in formation came cascading down upon him in a mortifying, choking flood of stinging details. He began to perspire and tremble. There was a sinister and unlikely coincidence exposed that was too diabolical in implication to be anything less than the most hideous of omens. The name of the man who had stood naked in ranks that day to receive his Distinguished Flying Cross from General Dreedle had also been—Yossarian! And now it was a man named Yossarian who was threatening to make trouble over the sixty missions he had just ordered the men in his group to fly. Colonel Cathcart wondered gloomily if it was the same Yossarian.
He climbed to his feet with an air of intolerable woe and began moving about his office. He felt himself in the presence of the mysterious. The naked man in formation, he conceded cheerlessly, had been a real black eye for him. So had the tampering with the bomb line before the mission to Bologna and the seven-day delay in destroying the bridge at Ferrara, even though destroying the bridge at Ferrara finally, he remembered with glee, had been a real feather in his cap, although losing a plane there the second time around, he recalled in dejection, had been another black eye, even though he had won another real feather in his cap by getting a medal approved for the bombardier who had gotten him the real black eye in the first place by going around over the target twice. That bombardier’s name, he remembered suddenly with another stupefying shock, had also been Yossarian! Now there were three! His viscous eyes bulged with astonishment and he whipped himself around in alarm to see what was
