"No, sir," corrected smugly the patronizing young man. "No, sirree. Because we come up with something better as they break away. Wait till you hear it."
Gaffney nodded. "I think you said you already have."
"It's a children's chorus," said the computer technician. "As the Wagner fades, softly underneath it and rising steadily we introduce a chorus of children that most people have never heard. It's angelic. And just when it's most moving, we blast in comedy, a chorus of musical laughter, to set the new mood we want for the rest of the evening. It's a chorus of laughing men that overpowers and drowns out the kids, and we're off. They're both by a German composer named Adrian Leverkuhn. Do you know him?"
"I've heard of him," said Yossarian, wary, feeling strangely as though he were wobbling about in time again. "He's a character in a work of fiction," he added nastily.
"I didn't know that," said the young man Hacker. "Then you know how great he was. Both these choruses are from his cantata called The Lamentations of Faust, but we don't have to tell people that."
"Good," snapped Yossarian. "Because they're not. They're from his oratorio called Apocalypse."
The computer whiz smiled up at Yossarian pityingly. "Mr. Gaffney?"
"He's wrong, Hacker," Jerry Gaffney said, shrugging at Yossarian with a shade of courteous apology. "Yo-Yo, you keep making that mistake. It's not the Apocalypse. It's from his Lamentations of Faust."
"God damn it, Gaffney, you're wrong again. And I ought to know. I've been thinking of writing a novel about that work for something like fifteen years."
"How quaint, Yo-Yo. But not thinking seriously, and not a serious novel."
"Cut the Yo-Yo, Gaffney. We're in an argument again. I did the research."
"You were going to have Thomas Mann and Leverkuhn in scenes together, weren't you? And put that Gustav Aschenbach in with Leverkuhn as one of his contemporaries. You call that research?"
"Who's Gustav Aschenbach?" said Hacker.
"A dead man in Venice, Warren."
"Gentlemen, I can settle it easily for both of you, right here on my computer. Hold on three ten-thousandths of a second. Ah-ha, come see. There, Mr. Yossarian, Lamentations of Faust. You are mistaken."
"Your computer is wrong."
"Yo-Yo," said Gaffney, "this is a model. It can't be wrong. Go ahead with the wedding. Let them see how it went."
On the largest screens the sun turned black, the moon turned the color of blood, and the ships in the rivers and the harbor were overturned.
"Warren, stop kidding." Gaffney was displeased.
"It's not me, Jerry. I swear. I keep deleting that. And it keeps coming back. Here we go."
The Leverkuhn music, Yossarian saw, went over well. As the dying harmonies ending Gotterdammerung neared conclusion, a tender children's chorus Yossarian could not remember having heard before came stealing in ethereally, at first a breath, a hint, then rose gradually into an essence of its own, into a celestial premonition of pathetic heartbreak. And next, when the sweet, painful, and saddening foreshadowing was almost unbearable, there smashed in, with no warning, the shattering, unfamiliar, toneless scales of unrelenting masculine voices in crashing choirs of ruthless laughter, of laughter, laughter, laughter, and this produced in the listeners a reaction of amazed relief and tremendous, mounting jollity. The audience quickly joined in with laughter of its own to the barbaric cacophonous ensemble of rollicking jubilation that rebounded from speakers everywhere, and the festal mood for the gala evening was ready to commence gleefully, with food, and drink, and music, and with more ingenious displays and aesthetic delicacies.
Yossarian was there and laughing too, he saw with a shock. He frowned at himself in reproach, while Olivia Maxon, at his side there in the Communications Control Center of the terminal, saw herself laughing with him in the chapel of the North Wing and said it was divine. Yossarian now looked contrite in both places. He was scowling, in this place and that place, in peevish detachment. Staring into this future, Yossarian was mesmerized to find himself in white tie and tails: he had never in his life worn white tie and tails, the costume prescribed for all males in that elite group of insiders in the North Wing. Soon he was dancing a restrained two-step with Frances Beach, then in succession with Melissa, the bride, and Olivia. What displeased Yossarian often about himself, he remembered now, seeing these pictures of himself looking silent, acquiescent, and accommodating at that wedding awaiting him, was that he did not truly dislike Milo Minderbinder and never had, that he thought Christopher Maxon congenial and unselfish, and found Olivia Maxon, though unoriginal and unchanging, grating only when expressing strong opinions. He had an abstract belief that he ought to be ashamed, and another abstract idea he should be more ashamed he was not.
He was seated with Melissa and Frances Beach at a table close enough to communicate with the Minderbinders and Maxons, near Noodles Cook and the First Lady, awaiting the arrival of the President. The chair reserved for Noodles at the table adjacent to Yossarian's was vacant. Angela, who wanted desperately to come, was not there, because Frances Beach would not allow her to be.
"I don't like myself for feeling that wa
y," Frances confessed to him. "I just can't help it. God knows, I did that same thing myself, more than once. I did it with Patrick too."
Dancing with Frances, for whom he preserved that special shared friendship some might call love, he felt only bone, rib cage, elbow, and shoulder blade, no fleshly thrill, and was uncomfortable holding her. Dancing equally inexpertly with pregnant Melissa, whose plight, stubbornness, and irresolution were agitating him at present into an almost ceaseless fury, he was aroused by the first contact with her belly in her sea-green gown and lusting to lead her away into a bedroom once more. Yossarian peered now at that belly to ascertain if the plumpness was fuller or whether the corrective measures restoring her to normal had already been taken. Gaffney regarded him with humor, as though again reading his mind. Frances Beach at the wedding spied his difference in response and ruminated dolefully on her sad facts of life.
"We're unhappy with ourselves when we're young, and unhappy with ourselves when we're old, and those of us who refuse to be are abominably overbearing."
"That's pretty good dialogue you give her," Yossarian challenged Hacker, with belligerence.
"I like that too. I got it from Mr. Gaffney here. It sounds pretty real."
"It should sound real." Yossarian glowered at Gaffney. "She and I already had that conversation."