Three Score & Ten

They were the most depressing group of people Yossarian had ever been with. They were always in high spirits. They laughed at everything. They called him “Yo-Yo” jocularly and came in tipsy late at night and woke him with their clumsy, bumping, giggling efforts to be quiet, them bombarded him with asinine shouts of hilarious good-fellowship when he sat up cursing to complain. He wanted to massacre them each time they did. They reminded him of Donald Duck’s nephews. They were afraid of Yossarian and persecuted him incessantly with nagging generosity and with their exasperating insistence on doing small favours for him. They were reckless, puerile, congenial, naïve, presumptuous, deferential and rambunctious. They were dumb. They had no complaints. They admired Colonel Cathcart and they found Colonel Korn witty. They were afraid of Yossarian, but they were not in the least bit afraid of Colonel Cathcart’s seventy missions. They were four clean-cut kids who were having lots of fun, and they were driving Yossarian nuts. He could not make them understand that he was a crotchety old fogey of twenty-eight, that he belonged to another generation, another era, another world, that having a good time bored him and was not worth the effort, and they bored him, too. He could not make them shut up; they were worse than women. They had not brains enough to be introverted and depressed.

Joseph Heller, Catch 22

Joachim never spoke of tittering Marusya, which therefore precluded Hans Castorp from mentioning Clavdia Chauchat. He restricted himself to harmless, furtive exchanges at meals with the teacher on his right, teasing the old maid about her weakness for their supple fellow patient until she would blush, and all the while trying to maintain his dignity by imitating old Grandfather Castorp’s chin-propping method. He also pressed her in order to learn new and interesting details about Madame Chauchat’s private life – her origins, her husband, her age, the exact nature of her illness. Did she have any children? he wanted to know. Oh, certainly not, no children. What would a woman like her do with children? Presumably she had been strictly forbidden to have any – and then, too, what sort of children would they have turned out to be? Hans Castorp had to concur. It was probably also too late now, he suggested with rugged objectivity. There were times, he remarked, when Madame Chauchat’s face, in profile at least, looked rather severe. Was it possible she was already past thirty? Fraulein Engelhart violently contested the very idea. Clavdia, thirty? At worst, twenty-eight. And as for her profile, his tablemate forbade him ever to say such a thing again. Clavdia’s profile was one of softest, sweetest youth – though it was, of course, a most interesting profile as well, not that of some healthy little goose. And by way of punishment and without even pausing, Fraulein Engelhart added that she knew for a fact that Frau Chauchat often entertained a gentleman caller, a fellow countryman who lived in Platz. She received him in her room every afternoon.

 Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain