It is as if we had an electronic book of Kafka that we actually could enter, as if the long halls and the clerks sitting outside the offices for the sole purpose of keeping us out had come to life. Even our accountant can’t figure out what’s happening to the Israel Association of Writers and the Bureau of Income Tax. We have a government deadline of January 3 and cannot apply for the grant we’re eligible for without a certificate from Income Tax. The clerk, who seems to be there every other day, or every day we don’t call, answers our urgent question by snail mail, and says she needs documents that haven’t existed for well over twenty years. I call up the chair of the Federation of Writers’ Unions for some moral support, but he can’t talk to me because he’s busy filling out tax forms and trying to figure out how he can account for some money donated to his organization well before he joined it. I’m grateful it’s not really real, that it’s only a fictional reality, a kind of video game. But I can imagine us disappearing into the screen, getting lost in the virtual mazes of the castle.
Bureaucracy is actually much easier in this country that it used to be, the banks are easy to work with, utility bills are easy to pay by standing orders at the bank, i can usually get to a real person and discuss any problems i might have with service and/or payment, etc. etc. But those big bureaus, they’re murder. The rules get more and more complex so only the most sophisticated people can get through.
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