The Guinea Pigs

This novel, set in Prague and its surrounding suburbs, has the elements of an allegorical play - a tight theme with variations, a small cast whose members are assigned exemplary roles, and a moral lesson or two (made ambiguous by the novel's surprising denouement). Unlike the idealized or generalized depictions of a more classical allegory, each of the people portrayed here is thoroughly individuated. The cast has only six named human characters: Vasek the narrator (look closely, you'll only see his name once, buried in a trivial remark), his wife Eva, his sons Vasek and Pavel, and two mysterious colleagues from the State Bank, Karasek and Chlebecek. Shabby old Chlebecek, who seems to do nothing at the bank but who has been kept on as the possessor of the banking secrets of the old (capitalist) system, is known to his fellow employees as "Mr. Slob" until he postulates a new theory to account for money that has been mysteriously removed from circulation - after which he acquires the new nickname "Mr. Maelstrom". The other four named characters are guinea pigs who reside in Vasek's apartment, acquired as family pets but now undergoing more traditional uses as experimental subjects at the narrator's hands. A cryptic little girl who is one of Eva's school pupils also appears; she makes unsettling predictions and functions as a Greek chorus might - the collective voice of doom. Does anybody know anything with certainty? That's the question here. Vasek is not even sure if his own son Vasek is leading a double life or if he himself is experiencing delusions on this point. What is the purpose of the hidden alliance between Karasek and Chlebecek? Is each of them insane, or merely devious? And the purpose of the large, empty barrel hidden in Chlebecek's office at the bank? How dangerous is Chlebecek's theory (the maelstrom theory) concerning the missing money? The bank's Director has classified it as an undiscussable idea with disturbing implications, even though he knows that all the bank's employees know of it - it is a "secret of state" which is public knowledge but cannot be mentioned in public. Who puts the cat in the apartment, the cat that wants only to eat a guinea pig and itself becomes a guinea pig for the narrator's painful "conditioning experiments"? And, as Karasek, who also keeps guinea pigs at home, puts it to the narrator, "What is the purpose of guinea pigs?" He wants the narrator to meditate on this. The narrator comes to his own conclusions about the matter - he begins to experiment with them. His experiments start benignly enough - he investigates what kind of discomfort or distress it takes to make a guinea pig come over and crawl into his warm and welcoming hand. The experiments become more vicious over time, turning in the direction of discovering what what level of torment is required to make a guinea pig wish to give up living. At this point the narrator confesses his disgust with himself and his alie

Ludvik Vaculik is perhaps one of the funniest Czech writers to come out of Prague Spring. Writing under the censor, Vaculik manages to merge a thoroughly disturbing tale of animal cruelty with a physical rendition of the chaotic Czech currency system of the time. But one doesn't have to know anything of the history of Czechoslovakia or communist censorship to enjoy this story. It's very funny and unsettling all the same. Highly recommended.