She smiled. "I was just past thirty. I recognize you now too from the photograph in our study."
Yossarian had not guessed the chaplain would possess a picture of him.
"Oh, yes, I'll show you." Mrs. Tappman led the way into the back of the two-story house. "He tells people often you just about saved his life overseas when things were most horrible."
"I think he helped save mine. He backed me up in a decision to refuse to continue fighting. I don't know how much he told you."
"I think he's always told me everything."
"I would have gone ahead anyway, but he gave me the feeling I was right. There's a blowup of that picture of you and the children he used to carry in his wallet."
One wall of the study was filled with photographs spanning almost seventy years, some showing the chaplain as a tiny boy with a fishing pole and a smile with missing teeth, and some of Karen Tappman as a tiny girl in party dress. The photograph he remembered displayed the Karen Tappman of thirty sitting in a group with her three small children, all four of them facing the camera gamely and looking sadly isolated and forsaken, as though in fear of a looming loss. On a separate wall were his war pictures.
Yossarian halted to stare at a very old fading brown photograph of the chaplain's father in World War I, a small figure petrified by the camera, wearing a helmet too massive for the child's face inside it, holding clumsily a rifle with the bayonet fixed, with a canteen in canvas hooked to his belt on one side and a gas mask in a canvas case on the other.
"We used to have the gas mask as a souvenir," said Mrs. Tappman, "and the children would play with it. I don't know what's become of it. He was gassed slightly in one of the battles and was in the veterans hospital awhile, but he took care of himself and lived a long time. He died of lung cancer right here in the house. Now they say he smoked too much. Here is the one he has of you."
Yossarian stifled a smile. "I wouldn't call that a picture of me."
"Well, he does," she answered contentiously, showing a streak he had not thought existed. "He would point it out to everyone. wAnd that's my friend Yossarian,' he would say. 'He helped pull me through when things were rough. w He would say that to everyone. He repeats himself too, I'm afraid."
Yossarian was touched by her candor. The photograph was of a kind taken routinely by the squadron public relations officer, showing members of a crew waiting at a plane before takeoff. In this one he saw himself standing off in the background between the figures in focus and the B-25 bomber. In the foreground were the three enlisted men for that day, seated without evidence of concern on unfused thousand-pound bombs on the ground as they waited to board and start up. And Yossarian, looking as slender and boyish as the others, in parachute harness and his billed, rakish officer's cap, had merely turned to look on. The chaplain had lettered the names of each man there. The name Yossarian was largest. Here again were Samuel Singer, William Knight, and Howard Snowden, all sergeants.
"One of these young men was killed later on," said Mrs. Tappman. "I believe it was this one. Samuel Singer."
"No, Mrs. Tappman. It was Howard Snowden."
"Are you sure?"
"I was with him again on that one too."
"You all look so young. I thought you might still look the same when I was waiting for you at the airport."
"We were young, Mrs. Tappman."
"Too young to be killed."
"I thought so too."
"Albert spoke at his funeral."
"I was there."
"It was very hard for him, he said. He didn't know why. And he almost ran out of words. Do you think they will set him free soon and let him come back home?" Karen Tappman watched Yossarian shrug. "He hasn't done anything wrong. It must be hard for him now. For me too. The woman across the street is a widow and we play bridge together evenings. I suppose I might have to learn to live like a widow sooner or later. But I don't see why I should have to do it now."
"There really is some concern for his health."
"Mr. Yossarian," she answered disapprovingly, in an abrupt change of mood. "My husband is now past seventy. If he's going to be ill, can't he be ill here?"
"I have to agree."
"But I suppose they know what they're doing."
"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 lit 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."