Уловка-22

Colonel Cargill had the next idea.	Полковник Карджилл высказал еще одно предположение:
'Maybe I ought to phone Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters and see if they know anything about it.	- Не позвонить ли мне в штаб двадцать седьмой воздушной армии? Может быть, они что-нибудь знают?
They have a clerk up there named Wintergreen I'm pretty close to.	У них там служит некий Уинтергрин, я с ним довольно близко знаком.
He's the one who tipped me off that our prose was too prolix.'	Это он подсказал мне однажды, что наши тексты слишком многословны.
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen told Cargill that there was no record at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters of a T. S. Eliot.	Экс-рядовой первого класса Уинтергрин сообщил полковнику Карджиллу, что штаб двадцать седьмой воздушной армии не располагает сведениями о Т.С. Эллиоте.
'How's our prose these days?' Colonel Cargill decided to inquire while he had ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen on the phone.	- Ну а как наши тексты сегодня? - решил заодно поинтересоваться полковник Карджилл.
'It's much better now, isn't it?'	- Намного короче, чем прежде, верно?
' It's still too prolix,' ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied.	- Воды еще хватает, - ответил Уинтергрин.

'It wouldn't surprise me if General Dreedle were behind the whole thing,' General Peckem confessed at last. 'Remember what he did to that skeet-shooting range?' General Dreedle had thrown open Colonel Cathcart's private skeet-shooting range to every officer and enlisted man in the group on combat duty. General Dreedle wanted his men to spend as much time out on the skeet-shooting range as the facilities and their flight schedule would allow. Shooting skeet eight hours a month was excellent training for them. It trained them to shoot skeet. Dunbar loved

shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times-seventeen years. 'I think you're crazy,' was the way Clevinger had responded to Dunbar 's discovery. 'Who wants to know?' Dunbar answered. 'I mean it,' Clevinger insisted. 'Who cares?' Dunbar answered. 'I really do. I'll even go so far as to concede that life seems longer I-' '-is longer I-' '-is longer-Is longer? All right, is

longer if it's filled with periods of boredom and discomfort, b-' 'Guess how fast?' Dunbar said suddenly. 'Huh?' 'They go,' Dunbar explained. 'Years.' 'Years.' 'Years,' said Dunbar.

'Years, years, years.' 'Clevinger, why don't you let Dunbar alone?' Yossarian broke in. 'Don't you realize the toll this is taking?' 'It's all right,' said Dunbar magnanimously. 'I have some decades to spare. Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?' 'And you shut up also,' Yossarian told Orr, who had begun to snigger. 'I was just thinking about that girl,' Orr said. 'That girl in Sicily. That girl in Sicily with the bald head.' 'You'd better shut up also,' Yossarian warned him. 'It's your fault,' Dunbar said to Yossarian. 'Why don't you let him snigger if he wants to? It's better than having him talking.' 'All right. Go ahead and snigger if