第66章 第二十二条军规 (1)

　　Catch-22

　　故事发生在第二次世界大战期间，美国空军的

　　一支飞行大队驻守在意大利以南地中海上的一个小岛

　　上。主人公约塞连是这支飞行大队的上尉轰炸手。他

　　本来是一个正直勇敢、富有爱国心的青年。起初，他

　　抱着为祖国而战的信念，出色地完成了任务，因而被

　　提拔为上尉，还获得了一枚勋章。后来他发现周围的

　　人都在暗算他，企图置他于死地。他竭力要保全自己

　　的生命，他要逃离这个“世界”。最后，约塞连恍然大悟，

　　第二十二条军规原来是一个骗局，他临阵逃脱，跑到

　　瑞典去寻找避难所。

　　[ 美] 约瑟夫·海勒（ Joseph Helle）

　　The Texan

　　It was love at first sight.

　　The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in

　　love with him. Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver

　　that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled

　　by the fact that it wasn’t quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they

　　could treat it. If it didn’t become jaundice and went away they

　　could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the

　　time confused them.

　　Each morning they came around，three brisk and serious

　　men with efficient mouths and inefficient eyes，accompanied by

　　brisk and serious Nurse Duckett，one of the ward nurses who

　　didn’t like Yossarian. They read the chart at the foot of the bed

　　and asked impatiently about the pain. They seemed irritated when

　　he told them it was exactly the same.

　　“Still no movement?”the full colonel demanded.

　　The doctors exchanged a look when he shook his head.

　　“Give him another pill.”Nurse Duckett made a note to give

　　Yossarian another pill，and the four of them moved along to the

　　next bed. None of the nurses liked Yossarian. Actually，the pain

　　in his liver had gone away，but Yossarian didn’t say anything and

　　the doctors never suspected. They just suspected that he had

　　been moving his bowels and not telling anyone.

　　Yossarian had everything he wanted in the hospital. The food

　　wasn’t too bad，and his meals were brought to him in bed. There

　　were extra rations of fresh meat，and during the hot part of the

　　afternoon he and the others were served chilled fruit juice or

　　chilled chocolate milk. Apart from the doctors and the nurses，no

　　one ever disturbed him. For a little while in the morning he had

　　to censor letters，but he was free after that to spend the rest

　　of each day lying around idly with a clear conscience. He was

　　comfortable in the hospital，and it was easy to stay on because

　　he always ran a temperature of 101.

　　After he had made up his mind to spend the rest of the war

　　in the hospital，Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew

　　saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why.

　　One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote

　　that he was going on a very dangerous mission.“They asked for

　　volunteers. It’s very dangerous，but someone has to do it. I’ll

　　write you the instant I get back.”And he had not written anyone

　　since.

　　All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor

　　letters written by all the enlisted-men patients，who were kept

　　in residence in wards of their own. It was a monotonous job，and

　　Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men

　　were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. After

　　the first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he

　　invented games. Death to all modifiers，he declared one day，

　　and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every

　　adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles.

　　He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day

　　when he blacked out everything in the letters but a，an and the.

　　That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions，he felt，and in

　　just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he

　　was proscribing parts of salutations and signatures and leaving

　　the text untouched. One time he blacked out all but the salutation

　　“Dear Mary”from a letter，and at the bottom he wrote，“I yearn

　　for you tragically. R. O. Shipman，Chaplain，U. S. Army.”R.O. Shipman

　　was the group chaplain’s name.

　　When he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters，he

　　began attacking the names and addresses on the envelopes，

　　obliterating whole homes and streets，annihilating entire

　　metropolises with careless flicks of his wrist as though he were

　　God. Catch-22 required that each censored letter bear the

　　censoring officer’s name. Most letters he didn’t read at all. On

　　those he didn’t read at all he wrote his own name. On those

　　he did read he wrote，“Washington Irving”. When that grew

　　monotonous he wrote，“Irving Washington”. Censoring the

　　envelopes had serious repercussions，produced a ripple of anxiety