Page 100

"I never, never could agree with that one. But they're also afraid he might explode."

She missed the point. "Albert doesn't have a temper. He never did."

Neither could think of any new effort to make, what with a local police force recording him as a missing person, a department of the federal government that professed no knowledge of him, another department that brought cash and regards every fifteen days, and a third department that insisted he had been called back into the army reserves.

"They're all rather fishy, aren't they?" he observed.

"Why is that?" she asked.

The newspapers, two senators, a congressman, and the White House were all not impressed. In the latest version of the chaplain's Freedom of Information file, Yossarian had witnessed changes: everything on him now had been blacked out but the words a, an, and the. There was no Social Security number and there remained in the file only a copy of a scrawled personal letter from a serviceman dating back to August 1944, in which all but the salutation "Dear Mary" had been blacked out and, at the bottom, the message from the censor, who'd been Chaplain Tappman: "I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army." Yossarian thought the handwriting was his own, but could not remember having written it. He said nothing to Karen Tappman, for he did not want to risk upsetting her about a woman in the chaplain's past with the name Mary.

In the psychological profile constructed by the FBI, the chaplain fit the model of that kind of preacher who runs off with another woman, and the empirical evidence was preponderant that the woman he had run off with was the organist in his church.

Mrs. Tappman was not convinced, for there had been no church organist and her husband had been without church or congregation since his retirement.

Yossarian waited almost until they had finished eating before he gave her the new piece of information he had gained from Gaffney in a telephone call from the plane over Lake Michigan. They dined early at her request and were able to save three dollars on the early bird specials. This was new to

Yossarian. They enjoyed an additional discount as senior citizens and did not have to show ID cards. This was new too. He ordered dessert only because she did first.

"I don't want to alarm you, Mrs. Tappman," he said, when they were finishing, "but they are also speculating it might be"--the word did not come easily to him--"a miracle."

"A miracle? Why should it alarm me?"

"It would alarm some people."

"Then maybe it should. Who will decide?"

"We will never know."

"But they must know what they're doing."

"I would not go that far."

"They have a right to keep him, don't they?"

"No, they don't have the right."

"Then why can't we do anything?"

"We don't have the right."

"I don't understand."

"Mrs. Tappman, people with force have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing. That's the catch Albert and I found out about in the army. It's what's happening now."

"Then there's not much hope, is there?"

"We can hope for the miracle that they do decide it's a miracle. Then they might have to let him go. There's also the chance they might call it"--he was hesitant again--"a natural evolutionary mutation."

"For making heavy water? My Albert?"

"The problem with the miracle theory is another psychological profile. It's almost always a woman now, in a warm climate. A woman, if you'll pardon me, with full breasts. Your husband just doesn't fit the mold."

"Is that so?" The words were a blunt retort delivered with cold dignity. "Mr. Yossarian," she continued, with a look of belligerent assurance on her sharp face, "I am now going to tell you something we have never disclosed to anybody, not even our children. My husband has already been witness to a miracle. A vision. Yes. It came to him in the army, this vision, to restore his faith at the very moment when he was about to declare as a public confession that he had given it up, that he no longer could believe. So there."

After a moment during which he feared he had angered her, Yossarian took heart from this show of fighting spirit. "Why would he not want to tell anybody?"

"It was given just to him, and not for notoriety."