Yossarian escaped, but kept looking back over his shoulder anxiously as he retreated through the street. People stared at him strangely, making him more apprehensive. He walked in nervous haste, wondering what there was in his appearance that caught everyone’s attention. When he touched his hand to a sore spot on his forehead, his fingers turned gooey with blood, and he understood. He dabbed his face and neck with a handkerchief. Wherever it pressed, he picked up new red smudges. He was bleeding everywhere. He hurried into the Red Cross building and down the two steep flights of white marble stairs to the men’s washroom, where he cleansed and nursed his innumerable visible wounds with cold water and soap and straightened his shirt collar and combed his hair. He had never seen a face so badly bruised and scratched as the one still blinking back at him in the mirror with a dazed and startled uneasiness. What on earth had she wanted from him?
When he left the men’s room, Nately’s whore was waiting outside in ambush. She was crouched against the wall near the bottom of the staircase and came pouncing down upon him like a hawk with a glittering silver steak knife in her fist. He broke the brunt of her assault with his upraised elbow and punched her neatly on the jaw. Her eyes rolled. He caught her before she dropped and sat her down gently. Then he ran up the steps and out of the building and spent the next three hours hunting through the city for Hungry Joe so that he could get away from Rome before she could find him again. He did not feel really safe until the plane had taken off. When they landed in Pianosa, Nately’s whore, disguised in a mechanic’s green overalls, was waiting with her steak knife exactly where the plane stopped, and all that saved him as she stabbed at his chest in her leather-soled high-heeled shoes was the gravel underfoot that made her feet roll out from under her. Yossarian, astounded, hauled her up into the plane and held her motionless on the floor in a double armlock while Hungry Joe radioed the control tower for permission to return to Rome. At the airport in Rome, Yossarian dumped her out of the plane on the taxi strip, and Hungry Joe took right off for Pianosa again without even cutting his engines. Scarcely breathing, Yossarian scrutinized every figure warily as he and Hungry Joe walked back through the squadron toward their tents. Hungry Joe eyed him steadily with a funny expression.
“Are you sure you didn’t imagine the whole thing?” Hungry Joe inquired hesitantly after a while.
“Imagine it? You were right there with me, weren’t you? You just flew her back to Rome.”
“Maybe I imagined the whole thing, too. Why does she want to kill you for?”
“She never did like me. Maybe it’s because I broke his nose, or maybe it’s because I was the only one in sight she could hate when she got the news. Do you think she’ll come back?”
Yossarian went to the officers’ club that night and stayed very late. He kept a leery eye out for Nately’s whore as he approached his tent. He stopped when he saw her hiding in the bushes around the side, gripping a huge carving knife and all dressed up to look like a Pianosan farmer. Yossarian tiptoed around the back noiselessly and seized her from behind.
“Caramba!” she exclaimed in a rage, and resisted like a wildcat as he dragged her inside the tent and hurled her down on the floor.
“Hey, what’s going on?” queried one of his roommates drowsily.
“Hold her till I get back,” Yossarian ordered, yanking him out of bed on top of her and running out. “Hold her!”
“Let me kill him and I’ll ficky-fick you all,” she offered.
The other roommates leaped out of their cots when they saw it was a girl and tried to make her ficky-fick them all first as Yossarian ran to get Hungry Joe, who was sleeping like a baby. Yossarian lifted Huple’s cat off Hungry Joe’s face and shook him awake. Hungry Joe dressed rapidly. This time they flew the plane north and turned in over Italy far behind the enemy lines. When they were over level land, they strapped a parachute on Nately’s whore and shoved her out the escape hatch. Yossarian was positive that he was at last rid of her and was relieved. As he approached his tent back in Pianosa, a figure reared up in the darkness right beside the path, and he fainted. He came to sitting on the ground and waited for the knife to strike him, almost welcoming the mortal blow for the peace it would bring. A friendly hand helped him up instead. It belonged to a pilot in Dunbar’s squadron.
“How are you doing?” asked the pilot, whispering.
“Pretty good,” Yossarian answered.
“I saw you fall down just now. I thought something happened to you.”
“I think I fainted.”
“There’s a rumor in my squadron that you told them you weren’t going to fly any more combat missions.”
“That’s the truth.”
“Then they came around from Group and told us that the rumor wasn’t true, that you were just kidding around.”
“That was a lie.”
“Do you think they’ll let you get away with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What will they do to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think they’ll court-martial you for desertion in the face of the enemy?”
“I don’t know.”
“I hope you get away with it,” said the pilot in Dunbar’s squadron, stealing out of sight into the shadows. “Let me know how you’re doing.”
Yossarian stared after him a few seconds and continued toward his tent.
“Pssst!” said a voice a few paces onward. It was Appleby, hiding in back of a tree. “How are you doing?”
“Pretty good,” said Yossarian.
“I heard them say they were going to threaten to court-martial you for deserting in the face of the enemy. But that they wouldn’t try to go through with it because they’re not even sure they’ve got a case against you on that. And because it might make them look bad with the new commanders. Besides, you’re still a pretty big hero for going around twice over the bridge at Ferrara. I guess you’re just about the biggest hero we’ve got now in the group. I just thought you’d like to know that they’ll only be bluffing.”
“Thanks, Appleby.”
“That’s the only reason I started talking to you, to warn you.”
“I appreciate it.”
Appleby scuffed the toes of his shoes into the ground sheepishly. “I’m sorry we had that fist fight in the officers’ club, Yossarian.”
“That’s all right.”
“But I didn’t start it. I guess that was Orr’s fault for hitting me in the face with his ping-pong paddle. What’d he want to do that for?”
“You were beating him.”
“Wasn’t I supposed to beat him? Isn’t that the point? Now that he’s dead, I guess it doesn’t matter any more whether I’m a better ping-pong player or not, does it?”
“I guess not.”
“And I’m sorry about making such a fuss about those Atabrine tablets on the way over. If you want to catch malaria, I guess it’s your business, isn’t it?”
“That’s all right, Appleby.”
“But I was only trying to do my duty. I was obeying orders. I was always taught that I had to obey orders.”
“That’s all right.”
“You know, I said to Colonel Korn and Colonel Cathcart that I didn’t think they ought to make you fly any more missions if you didn’t want to, and they said they were very disappointed in me.”
Yossarian smiled with rueful amusement. “I’ll bet they are.”
“Well, I don’t care. Hell, you’ve flown seventy-one. That ought to be enough. Do you think they’ll let you get away with it?”
“No.”
“Say, if they do let you get away with it, they’ll have to let the rest of us get away with it, won’t they?”
“That’s why they can’t let me get away with it.”
“What do you think they’ll do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think they will try to court-martial you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to fly more missions?”