No sound at all came from the soldier in white all the time he was there. The ragged round hole over his mouth was deep and jet black and showed no sign of lip, teeth, palate or tongue. The only one who ever came close enough to look was the affable Texan, who came close enough several times a day to chat with him about more votes for the decent folk, opening each conversation with the same unvarying greeting: 'What do you say, fella? How you coming along?' The rest of the men avoided them both in their regulation maroon corduroy bathrobes and unraveling flannel pajamas, wondering gloomily who the soldier in white was, why he was there and what he was really like inside.
'He's all right, I tell you,' the Texan would report back to them encouragingly after each of his social visits.
'Deep down inside he's really a regular guy. He's feeling a little shy and insecure now because he doesn't know anybody here and can't talk. Why don't you all just step right up to him and introduce yourselves? He won't hurt you.'
'What the goddam hell are you talking about?' Dunbar demanded. 'Does he even know what you're talking about?'
'Sure he knows what I'm talking about. He's not stupid. There ain't nothing wrong with him.'
'Can he hear you?'
'Well, I don't know if he can hear me or not, but I'm sure he knows what I'm talking about.'
'Does that hole over his mouth ever move?'
'Now, what kind of a crazy question is that?' the Texan asked uneasily.
'How can you tell if he's breathing if it never moves?'
'How can you tell it's a he?'
'Does he have pads over his eyes underneath that bandage over his face?'
'Does he ever wiggle his toes or move the tips of his fingers?'
The Texan backed away in mounting confusion. 'Now, what kind of a crazy question is that? You fellas must all be crazy or something. Why don't you just walk right up to him and get acquainted? He's a real nice guy, I tell you.'
The soldier in white was more like a stuffed and sterilized mummy than a real nice guy. Nurse Duckett and Nurse Cramer kept him spick-and-span. They brushed his bandages often with a whiskbroom and scrubbed the plaster casts on his arms, legs, shoulders, chest and pelvis with soapy water. Working with a round tin of metal polish, they waxed a dim gloss on the dull zinc pipe rising from the cement on his groin. With damp dish towels they wiped the dust several times a day from the slim black rubber tubes leading in and out of him to the two large stoppered jars, one of them, hanging on a post beside his bed, dripping fluid into his arm constantly through a slit in the bandages while the other, almost out of sight on the floor, drained the fluid away through the zinc pipe rising from his groin. Both young nurses polished the glass jars unceasingly. They were proud of their housework. The more solicitous of the two was Nurse Cramer, a shapely, pretty, sexless girl with a wholesome unattractive face. Nurse Cramer had a cute nose and a radiant, blooming complexion dotted with fetching sprays of adorable freckles that Yossarian detested. She was touched very deeply by the soldier in white. Her virtuous, pale-blue, saucerlike eyes flooded with leviathan tears on unexpected occasions and made Yossarian mad.
'How the hell do you know he's even in there?' he asked her.
'Don't you dare talk to me that way!' she replied indignantly.
'Well, how do you? You don't even know if it's really him.'
'Who?'
'Whoever's supposed to be in all those bandages. You might really be weeping for somebody else. How do you know he's even alive?'
'What a terrible thing to say!' Nurse Cramer exclaimed. 'Now, you get right into bed and stop making jokes about him.'
'I'm not making jokes. Anybody might be in there. For all we know, it might even be Mudd.'
'What are you talking about?' Nurse Cramer pleaded with him in a quavering voice.
'Maybe that's where the dead man is.'
'What dead man?'
'I've got a dead man in my tent that nobody can throw out. His name is Mudd.'
Nurse Cramer's face blanched and she turned to Dunbar desperately for aid. 'Make him stop saying things like that,' she begged.
'Maybe there's no one inside,' Dunbar suggested helpfully. 'Maybe they just sent the bandages here for a joke.'
She stepped away from Dunbar in alarm. 'You're crazy,' she cried, glancing about imploringly. 'You're both crazy.'
Nurse Duckett showed up then and chased them all back to their own beds while Nurse Cramer changed the stoppered jars for the soldier in white. Changing the jars for the soldier in white was no trouble at all, since the same clear fluid was dripped back inside him over and over again with no apparent loss. When the jar feeding the inside of his elbow was just about empty, the jar on the floor was just about full, and the two were simply uncoupled from their respective hoses and reversed quickly so that the liquid could be dripped right back into him. Changing the jars was no trouble to anyone but the men who watched them changed every hour or so and were baffled by the procedure.
'Why can't they hook the two jars up to each other and eliminate the middleman?' the artillery captain with whom Yossarian had stopped playing chess inquired. 'What the hell do they need him for?'
