Catch-22 (Catch-22 1)

'You always side with other people,' Corporal Whitcomb accused. 'You don't back up your men. That's one of the things that's wrong with you.'

'I didn't intend to side with him,' the chaplain apologized. 'I was just making a statement.'

'What did Colonel Cathcart want?'

'It wasn't anything important. He just wanted to discuss the possibility of saying prayers in the briefing room before each mission.'

'All right, don't tell me,' Corporal Whitcomb snapped and walked out again.

The chaplain felt terrible. No matter how considerate he tried to be, it seemed he always managed to hurt Corporal Whitcomb's feelings. He gazed down remorsefully and saw that the orderly forced upon him by Colonel Korn to keep his tent clean and attend to his belongings had neglected to shine his shoes again.

Corporal Whitcomb came back in. 'You never trust me with information,' he whined truculently. 'You don't have confidence in your men. That's another one of the things that's wrong with you.'

'Yes, I do,' the chaplain assured him guiltily. 'I have lots of confidence in you.'

'Then how about those letters?'

'No, not now,' the chaplain pleaded, cringing. 'Not the letters. Please don't bring that up again. I'll let you know if I have a change of mind.' Corporal Whitcomb looked furious. 'Is that so? Well, it's all right for you to just sit there and shake your head while I do all the work. Didn't you see the guy outside with all those pictures painted on his bathrobe?'

'Is he here to see me?'

'No,' Corporal Whitcomb said, and walked out.

It was hot and humid inside the tent, and the chaplain felt himself turning damp. He listened like an unwilling eavesdropper to the muffled, indistinguishable drone of the lowered voices outside. As he sat inertly at the rickety bridge table that served as a desk, his lips were closed, his eyes were blank, and his face, with its pale ochre hue and ancient, confined clusters of minute acne pits, had the color and texture of an uncracked almond shell. He racked his memory for some clue to the origin of Corporal Whitcomb's bitterness toward him. In some way he was unable to fathom, he was convinced he had done him some unforgivable wrong. It seemed incredible that such lasting ire as Corporal Whitcomb's could have stemmed from his rejection of Bingo or the form letters home to the families of the men killed in combat. The chaplain was despondent with an acceptance of his own ineptitude. He had intended for some weeks to have a heart-to-heart talk with Corporal Whitcomb in order to find out what was bothering him, but was already ashamed of what he might find out.

Outside the tent, Corporal Whitcomb snickered. The other man chuckled. For a few precarious seconds, the chaplain tingled with a weird, occult sensation of having experienced the identical situation before in some prior time or existence. He endeavored to trap and nourish the impression in order to predict, and perhaps even control, what incident would occur next, but the afatus melted away unproductively, as he had known beforehand it would. Déjà vu. The subtle, recurring confusion between illusion and reality that was characteristic of paramnesia fascinated the chaplain, and he knew a number of things about it. He knew, for example, that it was called paramnesia, and he was interested as well in such corollary optical phenomena as jamais vu, never seen, and presque vu, almost seen. There were terrifying, sudden moments when objects, concepts and even people that the chaplain had lived with almost all his life inexplicably took on an unfamiliar and irregular aspect that he had never seen before and which made them totally strange: jamais vu. And there were other moments when he almost saw absolute truth in brilliant flashes of clarity that almost came to him: presque vu. The episode of the naked man in the tree at Snowden's funeral mystified him thoroughly. It was not déjà vu, for at the time he had experienced no sensation of ever having seen a naked man in a tree at Snowden's funeral before. It was not jamais vu, since the apparition was not of someone, or something, familiar appearing to him in an unfamiliar guise. And it was certainly not presque vu, for the chaplain did see him.

A jeep started up with a backfire directly outside and roared away. Had the naked man in the tree at Snowden's funeral been merely a hallucination? Or had it been a true revelation? The chaplain trembled at the mere idea. He wanted desperately to confide in Yossarian, but each time he thought about the occurrence he decided not to think about it any further, although now that he did think about it he could not be sure that he ever really had thought about it.

Corporal Whitcomb sauntered back in wearing a shiny new smirk and leaned his elbow impertinently against the center pole of the chaplain's tent.

'Do you know who that guy in the red bathrobe was?' he asked boastfully. 'That was a C.I.D. man with a fractured nose. He came down here from the hospital on official business. He's conducting an investigation.' The chaplain raised his eyes quickly in obsequious commiseration. 'I hope you're not in any trouble. Is there anything I can do?'

'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 auth

orized 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.'