“I do know,” Yossarian teased back. “Nately’s whore told me.”

Orr grinned like a gargoyle. “No she didn’t.”

Yossarian felt sorry for Orr. Orr was so small and ugly. Who would protect him if he lived? Who would protect a warm-hearted, simple-minded gnome like Orr from rowdies and cliques and from expert athletes like Appleby who had flies in their eyes and would walk right over him with swaggering conceit and self-assurance every chance they got? Yossarian worried frequently about Orr. Who would shield him against animosity and deceit, against people with ambition and the embittered snobbery of the big shot’s wife, against the squalid, corrupting indignities of the profit motive and the friendly neighborhood butcher with inferior meat? Orr was a happy and unsuspecting simpleton with a thick mass of wavy polychromatic hair parted down the center. He would be mere child’s play for them. They would take his money, screw his wife and show no kindness to his children. Yossarian felt a flood of compassion sweep over him.

Orr was an eccentric midget, a freakish, likable dwarf with a smutty mind and a thousand valuable skills that would keep him in a low income group all his life. He could use a soldering iron and hammer two boards together so that the wood did not split and the nails did not bend. He could drill holes. He had built a good deal more in the tent while Yossarian was away in the hospital. He had filed or chiseled a perfect channel in the cement so that the slender gasoline line was flush with the floor as it ran to the stove from the tank he had built outside on an elevated platform. He had constructed andirons for the fireplace out of excess bomb parts and had filled them with stout silver logs, and he had framed with stained wood the photographs of girls with big breasts he had torn out of cheesecake magazines and hung over the mantelpiece. Orr could open a can of paint. He could mix paint, thin paint, remove paint. He could chop wood and measure things with a ruler. He knew how to build fires. He could dig holes, and he had a real gift for bringing water for them both in cans and canteens from the tanks near the mess hall. He could engross himself in an inconsequential task for hours without growing restless or bored, as oblivious to fatigue as the stump of a tree, and almost as taciturn. He had an uncanny knowledge of wildlife and was not afraid of dogs or cats or beetles or moths, or of foods like scrod or tripe.

Yossarian sighed drearily and began brooding about the rumored mission to Bologna. The valve Orr was dismantling was about the size of a thumb and contained thirty-seven separate parts, excluding the casing, many of them so minute that Orr was required to pinch them tightly between the tips of his fingernails as he placed them carefully on the floor in orderly, catalogued rows, never quickening his movements or slowing them down, never tiring, never pausing in his relentless, methodical, monotonous procedure unless it was to leer at Yossarian with maniacal mischief. Yossarian tried not to watch him. He counted the parts and thought he would go clear out of his mind. He turned away, shutting his eyes, but that was even worse, for now he had only the sounds, the tiny maddening, indefatigable, distinct clicks and rustles of hands and weightless parts. Orr was breathing rhythmically with a noise that was stertorous and repulsive. Yossarian clenched his fists and looked at the long bone-handled hunting knife hanging in a holster over the cot of the dead man in the tent. As soon as he thought of stabbing Orr, his tension eased. The idea of murdering Orr was so ridiculous that he began to consider it seriously with queer whimsy and fascination. He searched the nape of Orr’s neck for the probable site of the medulla oblongata. Just the daintiest stick there would kill him and solve so many serious, agonizing problems for them both.

“Does it hurt?” Orr asked at precisely that moment, as though by protective instinct.

Yossarian eyed him closely. “Does what hurt?”

“Your leg,” said Orr with a strange, mysterious laugh. “You still limp a little.”

“It’s just a habit, I guess,” said Yossarian, breathing again with relief. “I’ll probably get over it soon.”

Orr rolled over sideways to the floor and came up on one knee, facing toward Yossarian. “Do you remember,” he drawled reflectively, with an air of labored recollection, “that girl who was hitting me on the head that day in Rome?” He chuckled at Yossarian’s involuntary exclamation of tricked annoyance. “I’ll make a deal with you about that girl. I’ll tell you why that girl was hitting me on the head with her shoe that day if you answer one question.”

“What’s the question?”

“Did you ever screw Nately’s girl?”

Yossarian laughed with surprise. “Me? No. Now tell me why that girl hit you with her shoe.”

“That wasn’t the question,” Orr informed him with victorious delight. “That was just conversation. She acts like you screwed her.”

“Well, I didn’t. How does she act?”

“She acts like she don’t like you.”

“She doesn’t like anyone.”

“She likes Captain Black,” Orr reminded.

“That’s because he treats her like dirt. Anyone can get a girl that way.”

“She wears a slave bracelet on her leg with his name on it.”

“He makes her wear it to needle Nately.”

“She even gives him some of the money she gets from Nately.”

“Listen, what do you want from me?”

“Did you ever screw my girl?”

“Your girl? Who the hell is your girl?”

“The one who hit me over the head with her shoe.”

“I’ve been with her a couple of times,” Yossarian admitted. “Since when is she your girl? What are you getting at?”

“She don’t like you, either.”

“What the hell do I care if she likes me or not? She likes me as much as she likes you.”

“Did she ever hit you over the head with her shoe?”

“Orr, I’m tired. Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“Tee-hee-hee. How about that skinny countess in Rome and her skinny daughter-in-law?” Orr persisted impishly with increasing zest. “Did you ever screw them?”

“Oh, how I wish I could,” sighed Yossarian honestly, imagining, at the mere question, the prurient, used, decaying feel in his petting hands of their teeny, pulpy buttocks and breasts.

“They don’t like you either,” commented Orr. “They like Aarfy, and they like Nately, but they don’t like you. Women just don’t seem to like you. I think they think you’re a bad influence.”

“Women are crazy,” Yossarian answered, and waited grimly for what he knew was coming next.

“How about that other girl of yours?” Orr asked with a pretense of pensive curiosity. “The fat one? The bald one? You know, that fat bald one in Sicily with the turban who kept sweating all over us all night long? Is she crazy too?”

“Didn’t she like me either?”

“How could you do it to a girl with no hair?”

“How was I supposed to know she had no hair?”

“I knew it,” Orr bragged. “I knew it all the time.”

“You knew she was bald?” Yossarian exclaimed in wonder.

“No, I knew this valve wouldn’t work if I left a part out,” Orr answered, glowing with cranberry-red elation because he had just duped Yossarian again. “Will you please hand me that small composition gasket that rolled over there? It’s right near your foot.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Right here,” said Orr, and took hold of something invisible with the tips of his fingernails and held it up for Yossarian to see. “Now I’ll have to start all over again.”

“I’ll kill you if you do. I’ll murder you right on the spot.”

“Why don’t you ever fly with me?” Orr asked suddenly, and looked straight into Yossarian’s face for the first time. “There, that’s the question I want you to answer. Why don’t you ever fly with me?”

Yossarian turned away with intense shame and embarrassment. “I told you why. They’ve got me flying lead bombardier most of the time.”