Home » Hungary » Krisztina Toth » A majom szeme ( Reading The Eye of the Monkey)
Krisztina Toth : A majom szeme ( Reading The Eye of the Monkey)
The book is set, presumably sometime in the not too far distant future in a country called the Unified Regency, and presumably based on Hungary at least to some degree. The country has been through a civil war, which is now over which it has left a very divided country, with very poor people and very rich, privileged people who have access to better facilities, including housing food other such benefits denied to the poorer people. Inevitably, there is a lot of crime around. and they are areas where the well to do people just do not go..
Giselle is a history professor at the New University. Her husband is also a university academic. The couple have no children. Giselle has a problem in that a young man is stalking her. When we first meet her, she is on a metro train and he is sitting on the other side. She is trying to ignore him. When she gets off the train, she tries to hide from him but he catches up with her, takes hold of her arm and says to her, that he has to speak to her because she is his mother. She is, of course well aware that she has never had a child.
She is so upset about this that she seeks counselling from a psychiatrist,Mihaily Kreutzer. As well as the issue with the stalker, she also says that she was bored with her husband and that she does not particularly enjoy her job stuffing useless facts into their heads of the students.
The focus moves toDr Kreutzer. He is separated from his wife Petra and they do not get on. They do have children. He is clearly a fairly important person and we will later see, that he is in direct contact with the Regent and has helped both the Regent and the Regent’s decicedly unstable wife. He has access to all sorts of interesting food which he takes to his aging mother who lives in a luxury flat but complains about the homeless people in the area. One day, when he visits the mother he finds her dead. He does no tseem too upset by this and carries on with his life.
He will later visit his own flat, which is now occupied by his estranged wife and their children, in order to collect some things. One thing he does collect is a photo of a monkey which had had a head transplant performed by Robert J. White. Kreutzer seems to be fascinated by animal transplants and has other photos of them. While he is there collecting the pictures, he rapes his ex-wife though she seems to be no more than somewhat annoyed. Later on we learn that he has had at least one thousand sexual encounters.
He will also meet the Regent, in a children’s playground, apparently where they usually meet. The Regent had been a former patient of his and he still gives him advice and they seem to be relatively friendly with one another. The Regent is somewhat paranoid that someone will attempt to assassinate him, but he does have bodyguards with him, of course.
He continues seeing Giselle though they do not discuss the man who said she was his his mother. However, he does ask her about her marriage and it is clear that it is not a very happy one. We do not share a conjugal relationship. Christ, what an idiotic expression she comments. We learn about her background. Her parents divorced and her father moved abroad with her older sister while she stayed with her mother. Her mother was not surprisinlyg very sad about losing one of her daughters. To make matters worse, her sister committed suicide at a later date.
We are also learning about Kreutzer’s life including a rare comic episode when he meets his son’s teacher, at a nudist colony and they discuss the son while both are naked and he is staring at the pubic hair of the woman with the teacher. Kreutzer get a visit from Albert, the man who claims that Giselle is his mother.
We are now following our relationship between Kreutzer and Giselle and the story of Albert, who lives with his partner. Bianka. He had been in an orphanage as a child, and for reasons that are explained believes that his mother is still alive and Giselle is his mother. We are also following Petra and her activities.
However, there seems to be something else going on which very much involves Dr Kreutzer, as he seems to be recruiting people, including Albert, for some sort of dubious project, whose details we only learn much later.
Giselle starts getting suspicious about Kreutzer, with good reason, and even meets up with Petra and they xchange notes. She learns that Kreutzer his far more devious than she had realised and also far more dangerous.
Inevitably, given our author’s history this book is clearly aimed at criticising the current Hungarian government and we see that all sorts of dirty deeds are going on, benefiting the well- to-do while going against the poor people and those who are in any way critical of the government. We learn that there has been a warning of severe smog and people have been told to stay in their houses but we suspect, rightly, that there is a lot more going on than mere smog.
So we have various stories in this book. The first one obviously is a dystopian view of modern day Hungary and all the deeds of Orbán and his cronies. We also get a detailed portrait of Kreutzer, who is clearly neurotic in terms of tidiness and cleanliness – one of his many disagreements with his wife – but also is a control freak and something of a sex maniac. There is the sad story of Albert who, apparently like a lot of people, lost his parents during the Civil War and is determined to try and find them. Giselle herself gets caught in.Kreutzer’s honeypot, not least because she has a very boring and sexless marriage. We also learn about Petra who is trying to keep her head of above water in a distinctly messy, failing marriage. Nobody comes out a winner and there are all too many losers.
Publishing history
First published in 2022 by Magveto Kiado
First published in English in 2020 by Seven Stories Press
Translated by Ottilie Mulzet