wiggled free finally and retreated frantically into the aisle with an ashen, trembling face. She backed away too far, and Dunbar, who had watched from the beginning, sprang forward on his bed without warning and flung both arms around her bosom from behind. Nurse Duckett let out another scream and twisted away, fleeing far enough from Dunbar for Yossarian to lunge forward and grab her by the snatch again. Nurse Duckett bounced out across the aisle once more like a ping-pong ball with legs. Dunbar was waiting vigilantly, ready to pounce. She remembered him just in time and leaped aside. Dunbar missed completely and sailed by her over the bed to the floor, landing on his skull with a soggy, crunching thud that knocked him cold.
He woke up on the floor with a bleeding nose and exactly the same distressful head symptoms he had been feigning all along. The ward was in a chaotic uproar. Nurse Duckett was in tears, and Yossarian was consoling her apologetically as he sat beside her on the edge of a bed. The commanding colonel was wroth and shouting at Yossarian that he would not permit his patients to take indecent liberties with his nurses.
‘What do you want from him?’ Dunbar asked plaintively from the floor, wincing at the vibrating pains in his temples that his voice set up. ‘He didn’t do anything.’
‘I’m talking about you!’ the thin, dignified colonel bellowed as loudly as he could. ‘You’re going to be punished for what you did.’
‘What do you want from him?’ Yossarian called out. ‘All he did was fall on his head.’
‘And I’m talking about you too!’ the colonel declared, whirling to rage at Yossarian. ‘You’re going to be good and sorry you grabbed Nurse Duckett by the bosom.’
‘I didn’t grab Nurse Duckett by the bosom,’ said Yossarian.
‘I grabbed her by the bosom,’ said Dunbar.
‘Are you both crazy?’ the doctor cried shrilly, backing away in paling confusion.
‘Yes, he really is crazy, Doc,’ Dunbar assured him. ‘Every night he dreams he’s holding a live fish in his hands.’ The doctor stopped in his tracks with a look of elegant amazement and distaste, and the ward grew still. ‘He does what?’ he demanded.
‘He dreams he’s holding a live fish in his hand.’
‘What kind of fish?’ the doctor inquired sternly of Yossarian.
‘I don’t know,’ Yossarian answered. ‘I can’t tell one kind of fish from another.’
‘In which hand do you hold them?’
‘It varies,’ answered Yossarian.
‘It varies with the fish,’ Dunbar added helpfully.
The colonel turned and stared down at Dunbar suspiciously with a narrow squint. ‘Yes? And how come you seem to know so much about it?’
‘I’m in the dream,’ Dunbar answered without cracking a smile.
The colonel’s face flushed with embarrassment. He glared at them both with cold, unforgiving resentment. ‘Get up off the floor and into your bed,’ he directed Dunbar through thin lips. ‘And I don’t want to hear another word about this dream from either one of you. I’ve got a man on my staff to listen to disgusting bilge like this.’
‘Just why do you think,’ carefully inquired Major Sanderson, the soft and thickset smiling staff psychiatrist to whom the colonel had ordered Yossarian sent, ‘that Colonel Ferredge finds your dream disgusting?’ Yossarian replied respectfully. ‘I suppose it’s either some quality in the dream or some quality in Colonel Ferredge.’
‘That’s very well put,’ applauded Major Sanderson, who wore squeaking GI shoes and had charcoal-black hair that stood up almost straight. ‘For some reason,’ he confided, ‘Colonel Ferredge has always reminded me of a sea gull. He doesn’t put much faith in psychiatry, you know.’
‘You don’t like sea gulls, do you?’ inquired Yossarian.
‘No, not very much,’ admitted Major Sanderson with a sharp, nervous laugh and pulled at his pendulous second chin lovingly as though it were a long goatee. ‘I think your dream is charming, and I hope it recurs frequently so that we can continue discussing it. Would you like a cigarette?’ He smiled when Yossarian declined. ‘Just why do you think,’ he asked knowingly, ‘that you have such a strong aversion to accepting a cigarette from me?’
‘I put one out a second ago. It’s still smoldering in your ash tray.’ Major Sanderson chuckled. ‘That’s a very ingenious explanation. But I suppose we’ll soon discover the true reason.’ He tied a sloppy double bow in his opened shoelace and then transferred a lined yellow pad from his desk to his lap. ‘This fish you dream about. Let’s talk about that. It’s always the same fish, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Yossarian replied. ‘I have trouble recognizing fish.’
‘What does the fish remind you of?’
‘Other fish.’
‘And what do other fish remind you of?’
‘Other fish.’ Major Sanderson sat back disappointedly. ‘Do you like fish?’
‘Not especially.’
‘Just why do you think you have such a morbid aversion to fish?’ asked Major Sanderson triumphantly.
‘They’re too bland,’ Yossarian answered. ‘And too bony.’ Major Sanderson nodded understandingly, with a smile that was agreeable and insincere. ‘That’s a very interesting explanation. But we’ll soon discover the true reason, I suppose. Do you like this particular fish? The one you’re holding in your hand?’
‘I have no feelings about it either way.’
‘Do you dislike the fish? Do you have any hostile or aggressive emotions toward it?’
‘No, not at all. In fact, I rather like the fish.’
‘Then you do like the fish.’
‘Oh, no. I have no feelings toward it either way.’
‘But you just said you liked it. And now you say you have no feelings toward it either way. I’ve just caught you in a contradiction. Don’t you see?’
‘Yes, sir. I suppose you have caught me in a contradiction.’ Major Sanderson proudly lettered ‘Contradiction’ on his pad with his thick black pencil. ‘Just why do you think,’ he resumed when he had finished, looking up, ‘that you made those two statements expressing contradictory emotional responses to the fish?’
‘I suppose I have an ambivalent attitude toward it.’ Major Sanderson sprang up with joy when he heard the words ‘ambivalent attitude’. ‘You do understand!’ he exclaimed, wringing his hands together ecstatically. ‘Oh, you can’t imagine how lonely it’s been for me, talking day after day to patients who haven’t the slightest knowledge of psychiatry, trying to cure people who have no real interest in me or my work! It’s given me such a terrible feeling of inadequacy.’ A shadow of anxiety crossed his face. ‘I can’t seem to shake it.’
‘Really?’ asked Yossarian, wondering what else to say. ‘Why do you blame yourself for gaps in the education of others?’
‘It’s silly, I know,’ Major Sanderson replied uneasily with a giddy, involuntary laugh. ‘But I’ve always depended very heavily on the good opinion of others. I reached puberty a bit later than all the other boys my age, you see, and it’s given me sort of—well, all sorts of problems. I just know I’m going to enjoy discussing them with you. I’m so eager to begin that I’m almost reluctant to digress now to your problem, but I’m afraid I must. Colonel Ferredge would be cross if he knew we were spending all our time on me. I’d like to show you some ink blots now to find out what certain shapes and colors remind you of.’
‘You can save yourself the trouble, Doctor. Everything reminds me of sex.’
‘Does it?’ cried Major Sanderson with delight, as though unable to believe his ears. ‘Now we’re really getting somewhere! Do you ever have any good sex dreams?’
‘My fish dream is a sex dream.’
‘No, I mean real sex dreams—the kind where you grab some naked bitch by the neck and pinch her and punch her in the face until she’s all bloody and then throw yourself down to ravish her and burst into tears because you love her and hate her so much you don’t know what else to do. That’s the kind of sex dreams I like to talk about. Don’t you ever have sex dreams like that?’ Yossarian reflected a moment with a wise look. ‘That’s a fish dream,’ he decided.
Major Sanderson recoiled as though he had been slapped. ‘Yes, of course,’ he conceded frigidly, his manner changing to one of edgy and defensive antagonism. ‘But I’d like you to dream one like that anyway just to see how you react. That will be all for today. In the meantime, I’d also like you to dream up the answers to some of those questions I asked you. These sessions are no more pleasant for me than they are for you, you know.’
‘I’ll mention it to Dunbar,’ Yossarian replied.
‘ Dunbar?’
