Catch As Catch Can

by Joseph Heller

  It was Nately’s mother and Nately’s eldest sister’s idea that he become an aviation cadet, since Air Corps officers wore no wires in their dress caps and since he would be sheltered in an elaborate training program while the Russians were defeated and the War was brought to a satisfactory end. Furthermore, as a cadet and an officer, he would associate only with gentlemen and frequent only the best places.

  As it turned out, there was a catch. In fact, there was a series of catches, and instead of associating only with gentlemen in only the best places, Nately found himself regularly in a whore-house in Rome, associating with such people as Yossarian and the satanic and depraved mocking old man and, even worse, sadly and hopelessly in love with an indifferent prostitute there who paid no attention to him and always went off to bed without him, because he stayed up late arguing with the evil old man.

  Nately was not quite certain how it had all come about, and neither was his father, who was always so certain about everything else. Nately was struck again and again by the stark contrast the seedy, disreputable old man there made with his own father, whose recurring allusions in his letters to oregano and rhapsodic exclamations about war and business were starting to become intensely disturbing. Nately often was tempted to blot these offending lines out of the letters he saved, but was afraid to; and each time he returned to the whorehouse, he wished earnestly that the sinful and corrupt old man there would put on a clean shirt and tie and act like a cultured gentleman, so that Nately would not have to feel such burning and confusing anger each time he looked at him and was reminded of his father.

  Dear Son (wrote his father):

  Well, those blasted Communists failed to capitulate asI expected them to, and now you are overseas in combat as an airplane pilot and in danger of being killed.

  We have instructed you always to comport yourself with honor and taste and never to be guilty of anything degrading. Death, like hard work, is degrading, and I urge you to do everything possible to remain alive. Resist the temptation to cover yourself with glory, for that would be vanity. Bear in mind that it is one thing to fight for your country and quite another thing to die for it. It is absolutely imperative in this time of national peril that, in the immortal words of Rudyard Kipling, you keep your head while others about you are losing theirs. (Ha, ha, ha! Get it?) In peace, nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility. But, as Shakespeare said, when the blast of war blows loose, then it is time for discretion to be the better part of valor. In short, the times cry out for dignity, balance, caution and restraint.

  It is probable that within a few years after we have won, someone like Henry L. Mencken will point out that the number of Americans who suffered from this War were far outnumbered by those who profited by it. We should not like a member of our family to draw attention to himself for being among those relative few who did not profit. I pray daily for your safe return. Could you not feign a liver ailment or something similar and be sent home?

  Love,

  Dad

  P.S. How I envy you your youth, your opportunity and all that sweet Italian pussy! I wish I were with you. (Ha, ha, ha!)

  The letter was returned to him, stampedKILLED IN ACTION .

  YOSSARIAN SURVIVES*

  If my memory is correct, no episodes or characters were deleted when the first typed manuscript ofCatch-22 was reduced in the editing from about eight hundred pages to six hundred. My memory is not correct. Shortly after the novel was published in late 1961, a friend who had read the original deplored the omission of a series of letters from Nately to his father. Subsequently, those eight or ten pages were published in Playboy under the title “Love, Dad” (December 1969).

  I should state that all of the cutting had been for the sole purpose of obtaining more coherence and effectiveness for the total work.

  More recently, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the novel, two officers at the U.S. Air Force Academy doing research on the work wanted to know why I had removed an entire small chapter dealing with a physical-education instructor and with the application of calisthenics and other exercises as preparations for combat and survival.

  My reactions of surprise were contradictory: I had forgotten I had written it; I was positive I had left it in. “Do you mean it’s not there?” I exclaimed. “That line ‘Don’t just lie there while you’re waiting for the ambulance. Do push-ups’?”

  They assured me that the entire chapter had been excluded, that they felt it was good, still timely, and that it ought to be published.

  Checking on my own, I find them correct on all points. That chapter is not in the novel; I think it ought to be published.

  Here it is.

  — JOSEPHHELLER

  Actually, Yossarian owed his good health to clean living—to plenty of fresh air, exercise, teamwork and good sportsmanship. It was to get away from all of them that he had gone on sick call the first time and had discovered the hospital.

  At Lowry Field, where he had gone through armament school before applying for cadet training, the enlisted men were conditioned for survival in combat by a program of calisthenics that was administered six days a week by Rogoff, a conscientious physical-education instructor. Rogoff was a staff sergeant in his mid-thirties. He was a spare, wiry, obsequious man with flat bones and a face like tomato juice who was devoted to his work and always seemed to arrive several minutes late to perform it.

  In reality, he always arrived several minutes early and concealed himself in some convenient hiding place nearby until everyone else had arrived, so that he could come bounding up in a hurry, as though he were a very busy man, and launch right into his exercises without any awkward preliminaries. Rogoff found conversation difficult. He would conceal himself behind a motor vehicle if one were parked in the vicinity or hide near the window in the boiler room of one of the barracks buildings or underneath the landing of the entrance to the orderly room. One afternoon, he jumped down into one of ex-Pfc. Wintergreen’s holes to hide and was cracked right across the side of the head with a shovel by ex-Pfc. Wintergreen, who poured a stream of scalding abuse after him as he stumbled away in apologetic humiliation toward the men waiting for him to arrive and put them through his exercises.

  Rogoff conducted his exercises from a high wooden platform

  between two privates on the ground he called his sergeants, who shared the same unquestioning faith in the efficacy of exercise and assisted him by performing each calisthenic up front after he himself had stopped to rest his voice, which was reedy and unpredictable to begin with. Rogoff abhorred idleness. Whenever he had nothing better to do on his platform, he strode about resolutely, clapped his hands in spasmodic outbursts of zeal and said, “Hubba, hubba.” Each time he said “Hubba, hubba” to the columns of men in green fatigues on the ground before him, they would say “Hubba, hubba, hubba, hubba” right back to him and begin scuffing their feet and shaking their elbows against their sides until Rogoff made them stop by unctuously raising his hand high in an approving kind of benediction and saying, as though deeply moved, “That’s the way, men. That’s the way.”

  Hubba, hubba,he had explained, was the noise made by an eager beaver, and then he had laughed, as though at an extraordinary witticism.

  Rogoff conducted them through a wide variety of obscene physical experiences. There were bending, stretching and jumping exercises, all executed in unison to a masculine, musical cadence of “One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.” The men assumed a prone position and did push-ups or assumed a supine position and did sit-ups. The men learned a lot from calisthenics. They learned the difference between prone and supine.

  Rogoff named, then demonstrated, each exercise he wanted done and exercised right along with them until he had counted one, two, three, four five times, as loudly as he could, at the top of his frail voice. The two privates he had promoted to be his sergeants continued doing the same exercise after he had stopped to rest his voice and was pacing spryly about on the platf
orm or clapping his hands with spirit.

  Occasionally, he would jump down to the ground without any warning, as though the platform were on fire, and dart inside one of the two-story barracks buildings behind him to make

  certain that no one who was supposed to be outside doing calisthenics was inside not doing them. The men on the athletic field would still be bending, stretching or jumping when he darted back out. To bring them to a halt, he would begin bending, stretching or jumping right along with them, counting one, two, three, four twice, his voice soaring upward almost perpendicularly into another octave the first time and squeezing out the second set of numbers in an agonized, shredded falsetto that made the veins and tendons bulge out gruesomely on his neck and forehead and brought an even greater flood of color to his flat red face. Every time Rogoff brought an exercise to an end, he would say “Hubba, hubba” to them, and they would say “Hubba, hubba, hubba, hubba” right back, like the bunch of eager beavers he hoped from the bottom of his heart they would all turn out to be.

  When the men were not bending, stretching, jumping or pushing up, they were taught tap dancing, because tap dancing would endow them with the rhythm and coordination necessary to do the bending, stretching, jumping and push-ups that would develop the rhythm and coordination necessary to be proficient at judo and survive in combat.

  Rogoff emoted the same ardor for judo as he did for calisthenics and spent about ten minutes of each session rehearsing them in the fundamentals in slow motion. Judo was the best natural weapon an unarmed fighting man had for coping with one or more enemy soldiers in a desert or jungle, provided he was unarmed. If he had a loaded carbine or submachine gun, he would be at a distinct disadvantage, since he would have to shoot it out with them. But if he was lucky enough to be trapped by them without a gun, then he would be able to use judo.

  “Judo is the best natural weapon a fighting man has,” Rogoff would remind them each day from his pinnacle in his high and constricted voice, spilling the words out with haste and embarrassment, as though he could not wait to be rid of them.

  The men faced one another in rows and went through the movements slowly, without making contact, since judo was so destructive a natural weapon that it could not even be practiced long enough to be learned without annihilating its students. Judo was the best natural weapon a fighting man had until the day the popular boxing champ showed up as a guest calisthenics instructor to improve their morale and introduced them to the left jab.

  “The left jab,” said the champ without any hesitation from Rogoff’s platform, “is the best natural defensive weapon a fighting man has. And since the best defensive weapon is an offensive weapon, the left jab is also the best natural offensive weapon a fighting man has.”

  Rogoff’s face went white as a sheet.

  The champ had the men face one another in rows and counted cadence while they learned and practiced the left jab in slow motion to a dignified four-beat rhythm, without making contact.

  “One, two, three, four,” he counted. “One, two, jab, four. Now the other column. Remember, no contact with the left jab. Ready? Jab, two, three, four, jab, two, jab, four, one, jab, three, jab, jab, two, three, jab. That’s the way. Now we’ll rest a few seconds and practice it some more. You can’t practice the left jab too much.”

  The champ had been escorted to the athletic field in his commissioned-officer’s uniform by an adulating retinue of colonels and generals, who stared up at him raptly from the ground in lambent idolatry. Rogoff had been bumped aside off his platform and was completely forgotten. Even the honor of introducing the champ to the men had been denied him. An embarrassed little smile tortured his lips as he stood off by himself on the ground, ignored by everyone, including the two privates he had made his sergeants. It was one of these sergeants who asked the champ what he thought of judo.

  “Judo is no good,” the champ declared. “Judo is Japanese. The left jab is American. We’re at war with Japan. You figure it out from there. Are there any more questions?”

  There were none. It was time for the champ and his distinguished flotilla to go.

  “Hubba, hubba,” he said.

  “Hubba, hubba, hubba, hubba,” the men replied.

  There was an awkward hush after the champ had gone and Rogoff had returned to his desecrated platform. Rogoff gulped in abasement, failing abysmally in his attempt to pass off with casual indifference the shattering loss of status he had just suffered.

  “Men,” he explained weakly in a choked and apologetic voice, “the champ is a great man and we’ve all got to keep in mind everything he told us. But he’s been traveling around a lot in connection with the war effort, and maybe he hasn’t been able to keep up to date on the latest methods of warfare. That’s why he said those things he did about the left jab and about judo. For some people, I guess, the left jab is the best natural weapon a fighting man has. For others, judo is the best. We’ll continue concentrating on judo here, because we have to concentrate on something and we can’t concentrate on both. Once you get overseas to the jungle or desert and find yourselves attacked by one or more enemy soldiers when you’re unarmed, I’ll let you use the left jab if you want to instead of judo. The choice is optional. Is that fair? Now, I think we’ll skip our judo session for today and go right to our game period instead. Will that be okay?”

  As far as Yossarian was concerned, there was little in either the left jab or judo to justify optimism when confronted by one or more enemy soldiers in the jungle or desert. He tried to conjure up visions of regiments of Allied soldiers jabbing, judoing and tap dancing their way through the enemy lines into Tokyo and Berlin to a stately four-beat count, and the picture was not very convincing.

  Yossarian had no need of Rogoff or the champ to tell him what to do if he ever found himself cornered without a gun by two or more enemy soldiers in a jungle or desert. He knew exactly what to do: throw himself on his knees and beg for mercy. Surrender was the best natural weapon he could think of for an unarmed soldier when confronted by one or more armed enemy soldiers. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it made more sense than left jabbing, tap dancing or judoing.

  And he had even less confidence in calisthenics. The whole physical-exercise program was supposed to toughen him for survival and save lives, but it couldn’t have been working very well, Yossarian concluded, because there were so many lives that were being lost.

  In addition to exercising, tap dancing, judo and left jabs, they played games. They played games like baseball and basketball for about an hour every day.

  Baseball was a game that was called the great American pastime and was played on a square infield that was called a diamond. Baseball was a very patriotic and moral game that was played with a bat, a ball, four bases and seventeen men and Yossarian, divided up into one team of nine players and one team of eight players and Yossarian. The object of the game was to hit the ball with a bat and run around the square of bases more often than the players on the opposing team did. It all seemed kind of silly to Yossarian, since all they played for was the thrill of winning.

  And all they won when they did win was the thrill of winning.

  And all that winning meant was that they had run around the square of bases more times than a bunch of other people had. If there was more point to all the massive exertions involved than this, Yossarian missed it. When he raised the question with his teammates, they replied that winning proved that you were better. When he raised the question “Better at what?” it turned out that all you were better at was running around a bunch of

  bases. Yossarian just couldn’t understand it, and Yossarian’s team-mates just couldn’t understand Yossarian.

  Once he had grown reasonably familiar with the odd game of baseball, he elected to play right field every time, since he soon observed that the right fielder was generally the player with the least amount of work.

  He never left his position. When his own team was at bat, he lay down on the ground in right field with a dandelion
stem in his mouth and attempted to establish rapport with the right fielder on the opposing team, who kept edging farther and farther away, until he was almost in center field, as he tried to convince himself that Yossarian was not really there in right field with a dandelion stem in his mouth, saying heretical things about baseball that he had never heard anyone say before.

  Yossarian refused to take his turn at bat. In the first game, he had taken a turn at bat and hit a triple. If he hit another triple, he would just have to run around a bunch of bases again, and running was no fun.

  One day, the opposing right fielder decided that baseball itself was no fun and refused to play altogether. Instead of running after a ball that had come rolling out to him between two infielders, he threw his leather baseball glove as far away from him as he could and went running in toward the pitcher’s mound with his whole body quaking.

  “I don’t want to play anymore,” he said, gesticulating wildly toward Yossarian and bursting into tears. “Unless he goes away. He makes me feel like an imbecile very time I go running after that stupid baseball.”

  Sometimes Yossarian would sneak away from the baseball games at the earliest opportunity, leaving his team one man short.

  Yossarian enjoyed playing basketball much more than he enjoyed playing baseball.

  Basketball was a game played with a very large inflated ball by nine players and Yossarian, divided up into one team of five

  players and one team of four players and Yossarian. It was not as patriotic as baseball, but it seemed to make a lot more sense. Basketball consisted of throwing the large inflated ball through a metal hoop horizontally fastened to a wooden backboard hung vertically high above their heads. The team that threw the ball through the hoop more often was the team that won.