“Naked, sir?”
“Take your pillow with you if you want to. And get some cigarettes, too, while you’re downstairs picking up my underwear and pants, will you?”
“I’ll send everything up for you,” Yossarian offered.
“There, General,” said Filpo with relief. “Now I won’t have to go.”
“Filpo, you nitwit. Can’t you see he’s lying?”
“Are you lying?”
Yossarian nodded, and Filpo’s faith was shattered. Yossarian laughed and helped Nately walk his girl out into the corridor and into the elevator. Her face was smiling as though with a lovely dream as she slept with her head still resting on Nately’s shoulder. Dobbs and Dunbar ran out into the street to stop a cab.
Nately’s whore looked up when they left the car. She swallowed dryly several times during the arduous trek up the stairs to her apartment, but she was sleeping soundly again by the time Nately undressed her and put her to bed. She slept for eighteen hours, while Nately dashed about the apartment all the next morning shushing everybody in sight, and when she woke up she was deeply in love with him. In the last analysis, that was all it took to win her heart-a good night’s sleep.
The girl smiled with contentment when she opened her eyes and saw him, and then, stretching her long legs languorously beneath the rustling sheets, beckoned him into bed beside her with that look of simpering idiocy of a woman in heat. Nately moved to her in a happy daze, so overcome with rapture that he hardly minded when her kid sister interrupted him again by flying into the room and flinging herself down onto the bed between them. Nately’s whore slapped and cursed her, but this time with laughter and generous affection, and Nately settled back smugly with an arm about each, feeling strong and protective. They made a wonderful family group, he decided. The little girl would go to college when she was old enough, to Smith or Radcliffe or Bryn Mawr-he would see to that. Nately bounded out of bed after a few minutes to announce his good fortune to his friends at the top of his voice. He called to them jubilantly to come to the room and slammed the door in their startled faces as soon as they arrived. He had remembered just in time that his girl had no clothes on.
“Get dressed,” he ordered her, congratulating himself on his alertness.
“Perchè?” she asked curiously.
“Perchè?” he repeated with an indulgent chuckle. “Because I don’t want them to see you without any clothes on.”
“Perchè no?” she inquired.
“Perchè no?” He looked at her with astonishment. “Because it isn’t right for other men to see you naked, that’s why.”
“Perchè no?”
“Because I say no!” Nately exploded in frustration. “Now don’t argue with me. I’m the man and you have to do whatever I say. From now on, I forbid you ever to go out of this room unless you have all your clothes on. Is that clear?”
Nately’s whore looked at him as though he were insane. “Are you crazy? Che succede?”
“I mean every word I say.”
“Tu sei pazzo!” she shouted at him with incredulous indignation, and sprang out of bed. Snarling unintelligibly, she snapped on panties and strode toward the door.
Nately drew himself up with full manly authority. “I forbid you to leave this room that way,” he informed her.
“Tu sei pazzo!” she shot back at him, after he had left, shaking her head in disbelief. “Idiota! Tu sei un pazzo imbecille!”
“Tu sei pazzo,” said her thin kid sister, starting out after her in the same haughty walk.
“You come back here,” Nately ordered her. “I forbid you to go out that way, too!”
“Idiota!” the kid sister called back at him with dignity after she had flounced past. “Tu sei un pazzo imbecille.”
Nately fumed in circles of distracted helplessness for several seconds and then sprinted out into the sitting room to forbid his friends to look at his girl friend while she complained about him in only her panties.
“Why not?” asked Dunbar.
“Why not?” exclaimed Nately. “Because she’s my girl now, and it isn’t right for you to see her unless she’s fully dressed.”
“Why not?” asked Dunbar.
“You see?” said his girl with a shrug. “Lui è pazzo!”
“Si, è molto pazzo,” echoed her kid sister.
“Then make her keep her clothes on if you don’t want us to see her,” argued Hungry Joe. “What the hell do you want from us?”
“She won’t listen to me,” Nately confessed sheepishly. “So from now on you’ll all have to shut your eyes or look in the other direction when she comes in that way. Okay?”
“Madonn’!” cried his girl in exasperation, and stamped out of the room.
“Madonn’!” cried her kid sister, and stamped out behind her.
“Lui è pazzo,” Yossarian observed good-naturedly. “I certainly have to admit it.”
“Hey, you crazy or something?” Hungry Joe demanded of Nately. “The next thing you know you’ll be trying to make her give up hustling.”
“From now on,” Nately said to his girl, “I forbid you to go out hustling.”
“Perchè?” she inquired curiously.
“Perchè?” he screamed with amazement. “Because it’s not nice, that’s why!”
“Perchè no?”
“Because it just isn’t!” Nately insisted. “It just isn’t right for a nice girl like you to go looking for other men to sleep with. I’ll give you all the money you need, so you won’t have to do it any more.”
“And what will I do all day instead?”
“Do?” said Nately. “You’ll do what all your friends do.”
“My friends go looking for men to sleep with.”
“Then get new friends! I don’t even want you to associate with girls like that, anyway. Prostitution is bad! Everybody knows that, even him.” He turned with confidence to the experienced old man. “Am I right?”
“You’re wrong,” answered the old man. “Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble.”
“From now on,” Nately declared sternly to his girl friend, “I forbid you to have anything to do with that wicked old man.”
“Va fongul!” his girl replied, rolling her harassed eyes up toward the ceiling. “What does he want from me?” she implored, shaking her fists. “Lasciami!” she told him in menacing entreaty. “Stupido! If you think my friends are so bad, go tell your friends not to ficky-fick all the time with my friends!”
“From now on,” Nately told his friends, “I think you fellows ought to stop running around with her friends and settle down.”
“Madonn’!” cried his friends, rolling their harassed eyes up toward the ceiling.
Nately had gone clear out of his mind. He wanted them all to fall in love right away and get married. Dunbar could marry Orr’s whore, and Yossarian could fall in love with Nurse Duckett or anyone else he liked. After the war they could all work for Nately’s father and bring up their children in the same suburb. Nately saw it all very clearly. Love had transmogrified him into a romantic idiot, and they drove him away back into the bedroom to wrangle with his girl over Captain Black. She agreed not to go to bed with Captain Black again or give him any more of Nately’s money, but she would not budge an inch on her friendship with the ugly, ill-kempt, dissipated, filthy-minded old man, who witnessed Nately’s flowering love affair with insulting derision and would not admit that Congress was the greatest deliberative body in the whole world.
“From now on,” Nately ordered his girl firmly, “I absolutely forbid you even to speak to that disgusting old man.”
“Again the old man?” cried the girl in wailing confusion. “Perchè no?”
“He doesn’t like the House of Representatives.”
“Mamma mia! What’s the matter with you?”
“È pazzo,” observed her kid sister philosophically. “That’s what’s the matter with him.”