Kafka and Dogberry in Long Beach

As you know, I live with two rescued cats named after physicists. I hadn’t
registered them with the city until this year. That’s because when you
adopt from Maine Coon Adoptions, you sign a promise to keep the cat indoors.
Rescued cats don’t need to go back out on dangerous streets. So I figured
we could live happily without the red tape. However, when I took them in
for their vaccinations a couple months ago, the veterinary hospital must
have notified the city. I received a notification from Animal Care Services.




I read the form carefully. It said “Current License Fee Cat $10” and “Senior
Citizen Cat $5.” So I sent them a check for $10, which is $5 for each cat.
I also wrote on Heisenberg’s form “This cat is 14 years old” and on Schroedinger’s
form “This cat is 13 years old.”




They sent my check back. “Incorrect amount.” Also checked on the return
form: “Senior Discount—Must Be Altered.” Yikes! I have to be altered to
get a fifty percent discount??




So I wrote a polite letter to the clerk (a city employee) and explained
that in the phrase “senior citizen cat,” the words “senior citizen” are
a compound adjective (lacking the hyphen) that modifies “cat.” That means
elderly cat. I added that I am a senior citizen, too, and I can prove
it. I photocopied my California driver’s license and put the copy in the
envelope with the two senior citizen cat forms (notice: no hyphens), my
original check, and my polite letter. I guess ambiguity is just one of
the facts of life when you’re dealing with a bureaucracy: bureaucrats are
not grammarians. Dealing with bureaucrats can of course become mildly Kafkaesque.

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) wrote some of the spookiest literary works of
the early 20th century. In his short story “The Metamorphosis” (1912),
a traveling salesman wakes up one morning to find himself metamorphosed
into a “monstrous vermin,” which is usually translated as a cockroach.
(But he’s nowhere as witty as Archy the Cockroach.) As I recall, he never
learns why he’s been transformed. In his novel
The Trial (1914), which Kafka never finished, a man finds him being
tried for an unknown crime before a remote, inaccessible authority. Wikipedia
tells us that the adjective “Kafkaesque” refers to situations in which
“bureaucracies overpower people, often in a surreal, nightmarish milieu
which evokes feelings of senselessness, disorientation, and helplessness.”
I have not been overpowered by Animal Care Services, but we all know about
that “surreal, nightmarish milieu”—we’ve visited the DMV, possibly had
encounters with the nice folks at EDD (whence cometh our unemployment “benefits”),
and waited eternally in waiting rooms at all kinds of institutions. You
know it. Those lines and encounters and waiting rooms can get pretty Kafkaesque.

Shakespeare knew about bureaucrats four centuries ago. The best example
comes from his comedy
Much Ado About Nothing, in which a head nightwatchman named Dogberry
brings proto-Kafkaesque farce into a situation that really isn’t very funny—Borachio,
who works for Don John, who hates the world, makes love to Hero’s maid
in her window while Claudio and Don Pedro are watching from below, with
the result that Claudio and Don Pedro think it’s Hero up there, with the
further result that Claudio accuses her of being lascivious and disrupts
the wedding before it begins—




          Would you not swear,


          All you that see
her, that she were a maid,


          By these exterior
shows? But she is none:


          She knows the heat
of a luxurious bed [“luxurious” means “lustful”];


          Her blush is guiltiness,
not modesty.




—at which point Hero faints and the friar suggests that they pretend she’s
dead. (This play is a comedy primarily in the Aristotelian sense that it
ends in a marriage. Two marriages, in fact.) Pretty soon, Dogberry and
his men hear Borachio bragging and arrest him.




I have three
Much Ado DVDs on my shelf. (1) Joseph Papp’s 1973 production set
in the U.S. about the time Teddy Roosevelt was president and starring Sam
Waterston as Benedick and Kathleen Widdoes as Beatrice, with Barnard Hughes
as Dogberry. The watchmen are Keystone Kops. (2) Kenneth Branagh’s 1993
version set in late 19th-century Tuscany and starring Branagh and Emma
Thompson, with Michael Keaton as a very Beetlejuiceish Dogberry. These
watchmen are unwashed and illiterate. (3) Joss Whedon’s 2013 version set
in Whedon’s own house in Malibu and starring Alexis Denisof as Benedick
and Amy Acker as Beatrice, with Nathan Filion as Dogberry. (I’d never heard
of any of Whedon’s actors; this production is excellent.) Filion’s head
of security is a straight-faced, totally serious, “just the facts, ma’am”
Sgt. Friday. He’s just like people we see being interviewed on the TV news
shows all the time.




Here’s what Dogberry says to Leonato in Act III, scene 5, when he brings
in Borachio and Conrade:




          One word, sir:
our watch, sir, have indeed


          comprehended two
auspicious persons, and we would


          have them this
morning examined before your worship.




And in Act V, scene 1 when he brings the criminals to Don Pedro, Dogberry
is Shakespearean clown as compleat bureaucrat. Pay attention as he enumerates
the charges:




          Marry, sir, they
have committed false report;


          moreover, they
have spoken untruths; secondarily,


          they are slanders;
sixth and lastly, they have


          belied a lady;
thirdly, they have verified unjust


          things; and, to
conclude, they are lying knaves.




Dogberry is of course using malapropisms. Our word “malapropism” comes
from a character named Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play
The Rivals (1775). Her most famous line is about the “allegories
on the banks of the Nile.” (Sheridan obviously invented the character’s
name by combining “mal” and “apropos.”)   




Just to be clear: I know several city employees. They’re smart people!
The Animal Care Services clerk who wrote the “senior citizen cat” line
on the registration form is neither a Mrs. Malaprop nor a Dogberry…but
you know what? I wish the people who create forms knew more about gooder
English!




P.S. My letter seems to have worked. I received two little metal tags,
one for each cat, plus another form. I filed the form. My cats don’t wear
collars, so I used nice blue ribbons to tie the metal tags to their doors
of their carriers.