Nately's Old Man
The Justice Department makes an unprecedented move: charging a fictional character from a book more than sixty-years old
On Monday, the Federal Justice Department announced the latest indictment under the New UnAmerican Committee of Censure, Patriotism and Justice (NUACCPJ). Known only as “Nately’s Old Man,” the indictee is a fictional character from Catch-22, a book first published in 1961.
When pushed as to why he would charge a fictional character with such a crime, attorney for the United States government Clyde Meeplemouse stated, “in an otherwise wholly patriotic book outlining the valor of war, the strife our brave soldiers face in service to their country, and the very rightness of World War II—and every war since under the doctrine of American Exceptionalism—Nately’s Old Man stands out as a blasphemous stain.”
In the book, Nately’s Old Man is a licentious pervert who spends his time watching young women fornicate with GIs in an Italian whorehouse. Nately, an upstanding American soldier of good breeding attending the Italian house of pleasure, valiantly defends his country from the the old man’s inane slander.
The old man watched him with victorious merriment, sitting in his musty blue armchair like some satanic and hedonistic deity on a throne, a stolen U. S. Army blanket wrapped around his spindly legs to ward off a chill. He laughed quietly, his sunken, shrewd eyes sparkling perceptively with a cynical and wanton enjoyment. He had been drinking. Nately reacted on sight with bristling enmity to this wicked, depraved and unpatriotic old man who was old enough to remind him of his father and who made disparaging jokes about America.
“America,” he said, “will lose the war. And Italy will win it.”
“America is the strongest and most prosperous nation on earth,” Nately informed him with lofty fervor and dignity. “And the American fighting man is second to none.”
“Exactly,” agreed the old man pleasantly, with a hunt of taunting amusement. “Italy, on the other hand, is one of the least prosperous nations on earth. And the Italian fighting man is probably second to all. And that’s exactly why my country is doing so well in this war while your country is doing so poorly.”
Nately guffawed with surprise, then blushed apologetically for his impoliteness. “I’m sorry I laughed at you,” he said sincerely, and he continued in a tone of respectful condescension. “But Italy was occupied by the Germans and is now being occupied by us. You don’t call that doing very well, do you?”
“But of course I do,” exclaimed the old man cheerfully. “The Germans are being driven out, and we are still here. In a few years you will be gone, too, and we will still be here. You see, Italy is really a very poor and weak country, and that’s what makes us so strong. Italian soldiers are not dying any more. But American and German soldiers are. I call that doing extremely well. Yes, I am quite certain that Italy will survive this war and still be in existence long after your own country has been destroyed.”
Nately could scarcely believe his ears. He had never heard such shocking blasphemies before, and he wondered with instinctive logic why G-men did not appear to lock the traitorous old man up. “America is never going to be destroyed!” he shouted passionately.
“Never?” prodded the old man softly.
“Well…” Nately faltered.
The old man laughed indulgently, holding in check a deeper, more explosive delight. His goading remained gentle. “Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so.”
Nately squirmed uncomfortably. “Well, forever is a long time, I guess.”
“A million years?” persisted the jeering old man in keen, sadistic zest. “A half million? The frog is almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its strength and prosperity, with its fighting man that is second to none, and with its standard of living that is the highest in the world, will last as long as… the frog?”
Nately wanted to smash is leering face. He looked about imploringly for help in defending his country’s future against the obnoxious calumnies of this sly and sinful assailant. He was disappointed. Yossarian and Dunbar were busy in a far corner pawing orgiastically at four or five frolicsome girls and six bottles of red wine, and Hungry Joe had long since tramped away down one of the mystic hallways, propelling before him like a ravening despot as many of the broadest-hipped young prostitutes as he could contain in his frail windmilling arms and cram into one double bed.
Nately felt himself at an embarrassing loss. His own girl sat sprawled out gracelessly on an overstuffed sofa with an expression of otiose boredom. Nately was unnerved by her torpid indifference to him, by the same sleepy and inert poise that he remembered so vividly, so sweetly, and so miserably from the first time she had seen him and ignored him at the packed penny-ante blackjack game in the living room of the enlisted men’s apartment. Her lax mouth hung open in a perfect O, and God alone knew at what her glazed and smoky eyes were staring in such brute apathy. The old man waited tranquilly, watching him with a discerning smile that was both scornful and sympathetic. A lissome, blonde, sinuous girl with lovely legs and honey-colored skin laid herself out contentedly on the arm of the old man’s chair and began molesting his angular, pale, dissolute face languidly and coquettishly. Nately stiffened with resentment and hostility at the sight of such lechery in a man so old. He turned away with a sinking heart and wondered why he simply did not take his own girl and go to bed.
…
“Well frankly, I don’t know how long America is going to last,” he proceeded dauntlessly. “I suppose we can’t last forever if the world itself is going to be destroyed someday. But I do know that we’re going to survive and triumph for a long, long time.”
“For how long?” mocked the profane old man with a gleam of malicious elation. “Not even as long as the frog?”
“Much longer than you or me,” Nately blurted out lamely.
“Oh, that is all! That won’t be very much longer then, considering that you’re so gullible and brave and that I am already such an old, old man.”
“How old are you?” Nately asked, growing intrigued and charmed with the old man in spite of himself.
“A hundred and seven.” The old man chuckled heartily at Nately’s look of chagrin. “I see you don't believe that either.”
“I don’t believe anything you tell me,” Nately replied, with a bashful mitigating smile. “The only thing I do believe is that America is going to win the war.”
“You put so much stock in winning wars,” the grubby iniquitous old man scoffed. “The real trick lies in losing wars, in knowing which wars can be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see how splendidly we’ve done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual state of crisis. Germany loses and prospers. Look at our own recent history. Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious trouble. Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we hadn’t a chance of winning. But now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we will certainly come out on top again if we succeed in being defeated.”
Nately gaped at him in undisguised befuddlement. “Now I really don’t understand what you’re saying. You talk like a madman.”
“But I live like a sane one. I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top, and I am an anti-fascist now that he had been deposed. I was fanatically pro-German when the Germans were here to protect us against the Americans, and now that the Americans are here to protect us against the Germans I am fanatically pro-American. I can assure you, my outraged friend”––the old man’s knowing, disdainful eyes shone even more effervescently as Nately’s stuttering dismay increased.—“that you and your country will have a no more loyal partisan in Italy than me—but only as long as you remain in Italy.”
“But,” Nately cried out in disbelief, “you’re a turncoat! A timeserver! A shameful, unscrupulous opportunist!”
“I am a hundred and seven years old,” the old man reminded him suavely.
“Don’t you have any principles?”
“Of course not.”
“No morality?”
“Oh, I am a very moral man,” the villainous old man assured him with satiric seriousness, stroking the bare hip of a buxom black-haired girl with pretty dimples who had stretched herself out seductively on the other arm of his chair. He grinned at Nately sarcastically as he sat between both naked girls in smug and threadbare splendor, with a sovereign hand on each.
Under the NUACCJP, what Nately’s Old Man says is considered distinctly un-American. Critics of the Justice Department’s actions are quick to point out, however, that Nately’s Old Man is Italian; not American. “But the work of fiction he comes from is uniquely American,” Meeplemouse parried. “And therefore Nately’s Old Man falls under the jurisdiction of this act, which deals with any works regarding, pertaining to, written in, above or nearby-to, these United States.”
Nately’s Old Man is being charged, specifically, with turncoating, a lesser charge than treason outlined in the NUACCPJ, and gainsaying for his un-American statements reported in the novel, a novel which is “otherwise vastly patriotic,” Meeplemouse stated.
“Heller was a master of dialogue, detail and description,” Meeplemouse said. “Thus, we have a crystal clear image of Nately’s Old Man, and even an age: one-hundred ninety.” With impressive forensic work, Meeplemouse himself determined the man’s age: Nately’s Old Man stated he was one-hundred seven in the book, published in 1961, sixty-three years ago and set twenty years prior. “His crimes are also well documented, thanks to the valorous work of Mr Heller.”
These are crimes that others of equivalent irony have been charged with recently: teachers who share pencils with students, starving artists, and anyone who doesn’t know how to drive stick, but it’s the first time the laws have been used to indemnify a fictional character.
“The purpose of this law is to encourage people to be their most American selves,” Meeplemouse said. “In Joseph Heller’s time—as it is now—this country was the greatest in the world, and it continues that legacy now. Unlike what Nately’s Old Man forecasted, America will last until past the death of the solar system. Since his time, we have reached the moon, begun the colonization process of Mars, and invented ITO. We are unstoppable.” ITO, or indium tin oxide, is the substance smartphone screens are made of.
As the Justice Department’s targeting of a fictional character is unprecedented, experts are uncertain what sort of legal action could be taken against him. “Censorship,” was Meeplemouse’s hope. “Old editions of Catch-22 should be burned and replaced with versions where all of Nately’s Old Man’s dialogue is blacked out.”
“Mr Heller,” he added, “would be proud.”
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed, please click like and share with someone who has a sense of humor (or needs one).
Later this week, paid subscribers will get a copy of Clyde Meeplemouse’s proposal for censoring this part of Catch-22. You won’t want to miss it.