‘I still can’t hear you,’ Aarfy complained tolerantly, cupping his podgy hand behind the blanched corolla of his ear. ‘What did you say?’ Yossarian answered in a collapsing voice, weary suddenly of shouting so much, of the whole frustrating, exasperating, ridiculous situation. He was dying, and no one took notice. ‘Never mind.’
‘What?’ Aarfy shouted.
‘I said I lost my balls! Can’t you hear me? I’m wounded in the groin!’
‘I still can’t hear you,’ Aaxfy chided.
‘I said never mind!’ Yossarian screamed with a trapped feeling of terror and began to shiver, feeling very cold suddenly and very weak.
Aarfy shook his head regretfully again and lowered his obscene, lactescent ear almost directly into Yossarian’s face. ‘You’ll just have to speak up, my friend. You’ll just have to speak up.’
‘Leave me alone, you bastard! You dumb, insensitive bastard, leave me alone!’ Yossarian sobbed. He wanted to pummel Aarfy, but lacked the strength to lift his arms. He decided to sleep instead and keeled over sideways into a dead faint.
He was wounded in the thigh, and when he recovered consciousness he found McWatt on both knees taking care of him. He was relieved, even though he still saw Aarfy’s bloated cherub’s face hanging down over McWatt’s shoulder with placid interest. Yossarian smiled feebly at McWatt, feeling ill, and asked, ‘Who’s minding the store?’ McWatt gave no sign that he heard. With growing horror, Yossarian gathered in breath and repeated the words as loudly as he could.
McWatt looked up. ‘Christ, I’m glad you’re still alive!’ he exclaimed, heaving an enormous sigh. The good- humored, friendly crinkles about his eyes were white with tension and oily with grime as he kept unrolling an interminable bandage around the bulky cotton compress Yossarian felt strapped burdensomely to the inside of one thigh. ‘Nately’s at the controls. The poor kid almost started bawling when he heard you were hit. He still thinks you’re dead. They knocked open an artery for you, but I think I’ve got it stopped. I gave you some morphine.’
‘Give me some more.’
‘It might be too soon. I’ll give you some more when it starts to hurt.’
‘It hurts now.’
‘Oh, well, what the hell,’ said McWatt and injected another syrette of morphine into Yossarian’s arm.
‘When you tell Nately I’m all right…’ said Yossarian to McWatt, and lost consciousness again as everything went fuzzy behind a film of strawberry-strained gelatin and a great baritone buzz swallowed him in sound. He came to in the ambulance and smiled encouragement at Doc Daneeka’s weevil-like, glum and overshadowed countenance for the dizzy second or two he had before everything went rose-petal pink again and then turned really black and unfathomably still.
Yossarian woke up in the hospital and went to sleep. When he woke up in the hospital again, the smell of ether was gone and Dunbar was lying in pajamas in the bed across the aisle maintaining that he was not Dunbar but a fortiori. Yossarian thought he was cracked. He curled his lip skeptically at Dunbar’s bit of news and slept on it fitfully for a day or two, then woke up while the nurses were elsewhere and eased himself out of bed to see for himself. The floor swayed like the floating raft at the beach and the stitches on the inside of his thigh bit into his flesh like fine sets of fish teeth as he limped across the aisle to peruse the name on the temperature card on the foot of Dunbar’s bed, but sure enough, Dunbar was right: he was not Dunbar any more but Second Lieutenant Anthony F. Fortiori.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ A. Fortiori got out of bed and motioned to Yossarian to follow. Grasping for support at anything he could reach, Yossarian limped along after him into the corridor and down the adjacent ward to a bed containing a harried young man with pimples and a receding chin. The harried young man rose on one elbow with alacrity as they approached. A. Fortiori jerked his thumb over his shoulder and said, ‘Screw.’ The harried young man jumped out of bed and ran away. A. Fortiori climbed into the bed and became Dunbar again.
‘That was A. Fortiori,’ Dunbar explained. ‘They didn’t have an empty bed in your ward, so I pulled my rank and chased him back here into mine. It’s a pretty satisfying experience pulling rank. You ought to try it sometime. You ought to try it right now, in fact, because you look like you’re going to fall down.’ Yossarian felt like he was going to fall down. He turned to the lantern jawed, leather-faced middle-aged man lying in the bed next to Dunbar’s, jerked his thumb over his shoulder and said ‘Screw.’ The middle-aged man stiffened fiercely and glared.
‘He’s a major,’ Dunbar explained. ‘Why don’t you aim a little lower and try becoming Warrant Officer Homer Lumley for a while? Then you can have a father in the state legislature and a sister who’s engaged to a champion skier. Just tell him you’re a captain.’ Yossarian turned to the startled patient Dunbar had indicated. ‘I’m a captain,’ he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Screw.’ The startled patient jumped down to the floor at Yossarian’s command and ran away. Yossarian climbed up into his bed and became Warrant Officer Homer Lumley, who felt like vomiting and was covered suddenly with a clammy sweat. He slept for an hour and wanted to be Yossarian again. It did not mean so much to have a father in the state legislature and a sister who was engaged to a champion skier. Dunbar led the way back to Yossarian’s ward, where he thumbed A. Fortiori out of bed to become Dunbar again for a while. There was no sign of Warrant Officer Homer Lumley. Nurse Cramer was there, though, and sizzled with sanctimonious anger like a damp firecracker. She ordered Yossarian to get right back into his bed and blocked his path so he couldn’t comply. Her pretty face was more repulsive than ever. Nurse Cramer was a good-hearted, sentimental creature who rejoiced unselfishly at news of weddings, engagements, births and anniversaries even though she was unacquainted with any of the people involved.
‘Are you crazy?’ she scolded virtuously, shaking an indignant finger in front of his eyes. ‘I suppose you just don’t care if you kill yourself, do you?’
‘It’s my self,’ he reminded her.
‘I suppose you just don’t care if you lose your leg, do you?’
‘It’s my leg.’
‘It certainly is not your leg!’ Nurse Cramer retorted. ‘That leg belongs to the U. S. government. It’s no different than a gear or a bedpan. The Army has invested a lot of money to make you an airplane pilot, and you’ve no right to disobey the doctor’s orders.’ Yossarian was not sure he liked being invested in. Nurse Cramer was still standing directly in front of him so that he could not pass. His head was aching. Nurse Cramer shouted at him some question he could not understand. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and said, ‘Screw.’ Nurse Cramer cracked him in the face so hard she almost knocked him down. Yossarian drew back his fist to punch her in the jaw just as his leg buckled and he began to fall. Nurse Duckett strode up in time to catch him. She addressed them both firmly.
‘Just what’s going on here?’
‘He won’t get back into his bed,’ Nurse Cramer reported zealously in an injured tone. ‘Sue Ann, he said something absolutely horrible to me. Oh, I can’t even make myself repeat it!’
‘She called me a gear,’ Yossarian muttered.
Nurse Duckett was not sympathetic. ‘Will you get back into bed,’ she said, ‘or must I take you by your ear and put you there?’
‘Take me by my ear and put me there,’ Yossarian dared her.
Nurse Duckett took him by his ear and put him back in bed.
Nurse Duckett
Nurse Sue Ann Duckett was a tall, spare, mature, straight-backed woman with a prominent, well-rounded ass, small breasts and angular ascetic New England features that came equally close to being very lovely and very plain. Her skin was white and pink, her eyes small, her nose and chin slender and sharp. She was able, prompt, strict and intelligent. She welcomed responsibility and kept her head in every crisis. She was adult and self-reliant, and there was nothing she needed from anyone. Yossarian took pity and decided to help her.
Next morning while she was standing bent over smoothing the sheets at the foot of his bed, he slipped his hand stealthily into the narrow space between her knees and, all at once, brought it up swiftly under her dress as far as it would go. Nurse Duckett shrieked and jumped into the air a mile, but it wasn’t high enough, and she squirmed and vaulted and seesawed back and forth on her divine fulcrum for almost a full fifteen seconds before she
