Catch-22: A Novel by Joseph Heller

Author:Joseph Heller
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Historical, General, Fiction, chowbok, War & Military, Classics
ISBN: 9780684865133
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 1999-10-04T23:00:00+00:00

23. Nately’s Old Man

The only one back in the squadron who did see any of Milo’s red bananas was Aarfy, who picked up two from an influential fraternity brother of his in the Quartermaster Corps when the bananas ripened and began streaming into Italy through normal black-market channels and who was in the officer’s apartment with Yossarian the evening Nately finally found his whore again after so many fruitless weeks of mournful searching and lured her back to the apartment with two girl friends by promising them thirty dollars each.

“Thirty dollars each?” remarked Aarfy slowly, poking and patting each of the three strapping girls skeptically with the air of a grudging connoisseur. “Thirty dollars is a lot of money for pieces like these. Besides, I never paid for it in my life.”

“I’m not asking you to pay for it,” Nately assured him quickly. “I’ll pay for them all. I just want you guys to take the other two. Won’t you help me out?”

Aarfy smirked complacently and shook his soft round head. “Nobody has to pay for it for good old Aarfy. I can get all I want any time I want it. I’m just not in the mood right now.”

“Why don’t you just pay all three and send the other two away?” Yossarian suggested.

“Because then mine will be angry with me for making her work for her money,” Nately replied with an anxious look at his girl, who was glowering at him restlessly and starting to mutter. “She says that if I really like her I’d send her away and go to bed with one of the others.”

“I have a better idea,” boasted Aarfy. “Why don’t we keep the three of them here until after the curfew and then threaten to push them out into the street to be arrested unless they give us all their money? We can even threaten to push them out the window.”

“Aarfy!” Nately was aghast.

“I was only trying to help,” said Aarfy sheepishly. Aarfy was always trying to help Nately because Nately’s father was rich and prominent and in an excellent position to help Aarfy after the war. “Gee whiz,” he defended himself querulously. “Back in school we were always doing things like that. I remember one day we tricked these two dumb high-school girls from town into the fraternity house and made them put out for all the fellows there who wanted them by threatening to call up their parents and say they were putting out for us. We kept them trapped in bed there for more than ten hours. We even smacked their faces a little when they started to complain. Then we took away their nickels and dimes and chewing gum and threw them out. Boy, we used to have fun in that fraternity house,” he recalled peacefully, his corpulent cheeks aglow with the jovial, rubicund warmth of nostalgic recollection. “We used to ostracize everyone, even each other.”

But Aarfy was no help to Nately now as the girl Nately had fallen so deeply in love with began swearing at him sullenly with rising, menacing resentment.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.