Kafka calling: Infinity Insurance Company

A letter came in the mail the other day, from Sef Mawji at Infinity Insurance Company in Atlanta, GA, claiming that on 7/30/07 I was involved in an accident with one Dustin Ho. The letter didn't say whether it was a car wreck, a bed-wetting or some other kind of accident, but voice mail Mr. Mawji left yesterday said I had rear-ended the insured, who had identified my vehicle and license plate.

My last few phone calls to Mawji have gone unreturned, but you can imagine my curiosity to know more about this event, which took place more than two weeks after my car was totaled and left, with its key, at a body shop in Buffalo, WY. James reminds me that misunderstandings and clerical errors are more common than elaborate insurance fraud conspiracies and personal vendettas gone awry, but I am not comforted. Anyone who has seen Brazil knows that the object separating bureaucratic justice and tyranny is no thicker than the remains of a fly crushed between a typewriter key and a piece of paper, and even the most casual student of Kafka knows that bureaucracy's blood lust begins with unwarranted slander and accelerates swiftly and inexorably toward execution.

Here's the letter: