Catch-22 Read Online Free

pleased was he with
the large, fine, rambling, shingled building. It was truly a splendid
structure, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each
time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it
was his.
       There were four of them seated together at a table in the
officers’ club the last time he and Clevinger had called each other crazy. They
were seated in back near the crap table on which Appleby always managed to win.
Appleby was as good at shooting crap as he was at playing ping-pong, and he was
as good at playing ping-pong as he was at everything else. Everything Appleby
did, he did well. Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who believed in God,
Motherhood and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of
them, and everybody who knew him liked him.
       ‘I hate that son of a bitch,’ Yossarian growled.
       The argument with Clevinger had begun a few minutes earlier
when Yossarian had been unable to find a machine gun. It was a busy night. The
bar was busy, the crap table was busy, the ping-gong table was busy. The people
Yossarian wanted to machine-gun were busy at the bar singing sentimental old
favorites that nobody else ever tired of. Instead of machine-gunning them, he
brought his heel down hard on the ping-pong ball that came rolling toward him
off the paddle of one of the two officers playing.
       ‘That Yossarian,’ the two officers laughed, shaking their
heads, and got another ball from the box on the shelf.
       ‘That Yossarian,’ Yossarian answered them.
       ‘Yossarian,’ Nately whispered cautioningly.
       ‘You see what I mean?’ asked Clevinger.
       The officers laughed again when they heard Yossarian
mimicking them. ‘That Yossarian,’ they said more loudly.
       ‘That Yossarian,’ Yossarian echoed.
       ‘Yossarian, please,’ Nately pleaded.
       ‘You see what I mean?’ asked Clevinger. ‘He has antisocial
aggressions.’
       ‘Oh, shut up,’ Dunbar told Clevinger. Dunbar liked Clevinger
because Clevinger annoyed him and made the time go slow.
       ‘Appleby isn’t even here,’ Clevinger pointed out triumphantly
to Yossarian.
       ‘Who said anything about Appleby?’ Yossarian wanted to know.
       ‘Colonel Cathcart isn’t here, either.’
       ‘Who said anything about Colonel Cathcart?’
       ‘What son of a bitch do you hate, then?’
       ‘What son of a bitch is here?’
       ‘I’m not going to argue with you,’ Clevinger decided. ‘You
don’t know who you hate.’
       ‘Whoever’s trying to poison me,’ Yossarian told him.
       ‘Nobody’s trying to poison you.’
       ‘They poisoned my food twice, didn’t they? Didn’t they put
poison in my food during Ferrara and during the Great Big Siege of Bologna?’
       ‘They put poison in everybody’s food,’ Clevinger explained.
       ‘And what difference does that make?’
       ‘And it wasn’t even poison!’ Clevinger cried heatedly,
growing more emphatic as he grew more confused.
       As far back as Yossarian could recall, he explained to
Clevinger with a patient smile, somebody was always hatching a plot to kill
him. There were people who cared for him and people who didn’t, and those who
didn’t hated him and were out to get him. They hated him because he was
Assyrian. But they couldn’t touch him, he told Clevinger, because he had a
sound mind in a pure body and was as strong as an ox. They couldn’t touch him
because he was Tarzan, Mandrake, Flash Gordon. He was Bill Shakespeare. He was
Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deirdre of the
Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees. He was miracle ingredient
Z-247. He was—’Crazy!’ Clevinger interrupted, shrieking. ‘That’s what you are!
Crazy!
       ‘—immense. I’m a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness,
three-fisted humdinger. I’m a bona fide