"Like Aschenbach?"
"Aschenbach?"
"Gustav Aschenbach."
"From Death in Venice again? I never liked that story much and can't see why you do. I bet I can tell you a few things wrong with it."
"So can I. But it remains unforgettable."
"To you."
"To you too someday, maybe."
Aschenbach too had run out of interests, although he distracted himself with his ridiculous obsession and the conceit that there was still much left for him to do. He was an artist of the intellect, who had tired of working on projects that would no longer yield to even his most patient effort, and knew he now was faking it. But he did not know that his true creative life was over and that he and his era were coming to a close, whether he liked it or not. And he was only just past fifty. Yossarian had the advantage over him there. He had never had much that he had allowed himself to enjoy. A strange nature for Yossarian to empathize with now, this man who lived like a tightened fist and began each day with the same cold shower, who worked in the morning and wished nothing more than to be able to continue his work in the evening.
"He dyed his hair black," Yossarian related, like a lecturer, "easily allowed a barber to persuade him to do that, to put makeup around his eyes for the illusion of a glisten, to color his cheeks with a touch of red, to plump up his eyebrows, to erase the age from his skin with a face cream and round out his lips with tints and with shadows, and he gave up the ghost anyway, right on the dot. And got nothing in return for his trouble but the tormenting delusion that he had fallen in love with a boy with crooked teeth and a sandy nose. Our Aschenbach could not even bring himself to die dramatically, not even of the plague. He simply bowed his head and gave up the ghost."
"I think," said Michael, "you might be trying to make it sound better than it really is."
"Maybe," said Yossarian, who felt qualms it might be so, "but that's where I stand. Here's what Mann wrote then: that a menace had hung over Europe for months."
"World War II?" Michael guessed, indulging him.
"World War I!" Yossarian corrected emphatically. "Even back then, Mann could see where this ungovernable machine we call our civilization was heading. And here's what's been my fate in this latter half of my life. I make money from Milo, whom I don't care for and condemn. And I find myself identifying in self-pity with a fictional German with no humor or any other likable trait. Soon I'll be going down deeper into PABT with McBride to find out what's there. Is that my Venice? I met a man in Paris once, a cultured book publisher, who could not bring himself ever to go to Venice, because of that story. I met another man who could not vacation for as long as a week at any resort in the mountains because of The Magic Mountain. He'd have the hideous dream that he was dying there and would never get away alive if he stayed, and he'd get the hell out the next day."
"Is a Minderbinder going to marry a Maxon?"
"They both have brides to offer. I've suggested M2."
"When are you going back there with McBride?"
"Soon as the President says he might come and we get permission to examine the place. When are you going with M2?"
"As soon as he's hot to look at dirty pictures again. I draw my pay from M & M too."
"If you want to live under water, Michael, you must learn to breathe like a fish."
"How do you feel about that?"
"That we never had a choice. I don't feel good about it, but I won't feel bad. It's our natural destiny, as Teemer might say. Biologically, we are a new species and haven't learned to fit into nature yet. He thinks we're cancers."
"Cancers?"
"But he likes us anyway, and he doesn't like cancer."
"I think he's crazy," Michael protested.
"He thinks so too," Yossarian replied, "and has moved into the psychiatric ward of the hospital for treatment while he continues work as an oncologist. Does that seem crazy?"
"It doesn't seem sane."
"That doesn't mean he's mistaken. We can see the social pathology. What else worries you, Michael?"
"I'm pretty much alone, I told you," said Michael. "And I'm starting to get scared. About money too. You've managed to get me worried about that."
"I'm glad I've been useful."
"I wouldn't know where to get it if I didn't have any. I couldn't even mug anybody. I don't know how."