Healing Matrix: The Betwixt Jeopardy

The Betwixt Jeopardy

by Manjit Handa

In the busy city of Toronto, Raymond (25) and Hannah (24) meet as strangers in a party which ends up in a one night stand. Blown away with the sparks, the one night stretches into a week of magical togetherness, which could have prolonged further but Hannah has already made bookings for Jerusalem and no matter what she has to leave.

Born and raised in Toronto, Hannah’s journey to Jerusalem entails spending nine months in an orthodox yeshiva, learning Torah and gaining a deep understanding of Jewish rituals and customs, something about which her family has not been so fussy. Raymond, on the other hand is in University working on his doctoral thesis which is based on Robert Burton’s opus The Anatomy of Melancholy. Separated geographically now, they find it hard to forget each other but thanks to e-mails, the romance continues and bridges the distance. What had started of as mere physical lust, now takes the shape of spiritual longing. Raymond mopes as he goes to the airport to see Hannah off: “Highways are built for silence. Lovers are built for crying. . .”

In Jerusalem, while Hannah struggles to understand her Jewish identity by studying and “being”(hence experiencing) in Jerusalem, Raymond, the blond blue eyed WASP pines in Toronto, not really writing his dissertation but just wanting to do so. Their e-mails give us a glimpse of their individualities, pursuits as well as growth as human beings. While Hannah makes new friends and promises Raymond that their togetherness is not too far, Raymond finds it extremely difficult to combat loneliness and carnal desire. Irresistibly drawn to each other, they make plans that Raymond could visit Jerusalem. His tickets are booked but the date still is too far. What of the days in-between? Young and full of passion, they soon find themselves on the crossroads, as Raymond gives in to physical desire and cheats on her. Hannah, on the other hand relentlessly moving on to be a true Jew contemplates marrying “only” a Jew. She thus tells Raymond: “I’m thinking of my future, and I want Jewish fucking babies, a husband who understands Torah and, say, the Holocaust.”

But still, neither of them can tolerate each others’ absence and they finally meet in Jerusalem to discuss and sort out the tangles of their emotional threads. Unfortunately, the more they try to disentangle, they end up pulling it hard to form knots which refuse to loosen. Much as Raymond regrets having slept with another woman and makes it very clear that it is Hannah he cares more about, it does not convince her. The fact remains that he has been a betrayer and more than that he is not a Jew. The former still would have convinced Raymond but the latter? Can human beings not grow out of these petty issues? He finds it disgusting. Even birds seem to have transcended this fundamentalist crap. Marche elucidates: “The pigeons fly into Jerusalem from Hebron, from Beirut, from the Golan, from Gaza, from Tel Aviv, from Cairo. They can’t tell the difference. They do not even have the intelligence to revere the holy places and the fences between them. . . They cross east to west, west to east; their judgment is indifferent: they shit on the heads of Jews, Muslims and Christians, Greeks, Arabs and Armenians.” Perhaps they shit because their heads are its rightful abode—full of shit and garbage.

And Jerusalem? What significance does it have? They say it is the city of God, but for the rational Raymond it does not mean much. Thus he deliberates: “Think about it: cities are constantly raised in height by the dust that covers them. Walls, stone by stone, whimper to emptiness. There is always a packet of remnants under the dirt, some record for the archaeologists. Walls keep being built, keep crumbling, keep remaining. Eventually the whole world will be remnants.”

We are passé the culture of expatriates who were still fresh from their countries and carried the whole package of their traditions and culture along to the west and hung on to it; so many generations away from the migrant culture, it seems good enough and commendable to go back and dig out one’s roots, (on Hannah’s part) but walking out of a relationship because of this, is not even convincing enough on fanatic grounds. The fascination with one’s roots is always alluring and will always be, no matter how far traveled generation we are from our original ancestors. We still want to be defined and Hannah devours everything Jewish—the Shabbat (its different matter that she cannot stick to all the rules), havruta, Yom Kippur or the disciplinarian lifestyle in general, until finally she considers marrying only a Jew. She derives great pleasure from the peculiarity of the landscape of Israel which for her becomes sacramental, be it the Dome of the Rock, the Sepulchre or the Wall. Going back to one’s country for the first time is still very shocking and Raymond voices, ”I read somewhere that culture shock’s more severe coming home than going away.” But for Hannah, “Even with all these troubles, Jerusalem est magnifique.”

The novel largely can be seen as a dichotomy, torn between various polarities. Raymond versus Hannah, Man versus Woman, West versus East, Toronto versus Jerusalem, New versus Old, Gentile versus Jew or even Self versus Other. And antinomies can never be resolved, which strangely always appeals to a reader. Raymond himself says in one of his letters: “I’m sacrilege where you live, that’s fascinating”. The fact remains that Hannah might be deeply attached to her religion, which is her present, yet her education and experiences, her past in the west make it impossible for her to ignore Toronto. Thus she frets: “Oh, and everyone here is rude. They treat you like family, that frank and that presumptuous, which is less charming than it sounds.” Her life is inextricably bound with learning Torah and the English novels of Graham Greene. She muses at one point: “These people are not my people though they are my people, and when I reach I cannot ever know what I will touch. That’s the thing. To be pacing comfortably, with no bag over my shoulder and fancy shoes on my feet, across College Street, Bloor or even Yonge Street, or. . .” She can never be truly defined. Doomed to be hyphenated. In-between, betwixed. Canada-born-non-resident-Israelite-Jew??

We would never know what became of Raymond and Hannah. Or of all the tensions in the book. But they sure do illuminate. Art does not propose to be instrumental or effective. In the gap between what is going to happen and whatever we would wish to happen, it grips our attention for a space where our power to focus is focused back on ourselves. All illuminations are fleeting. Marche rightly observes: “The first is that there is no end to debate and that solving the problem, coming to a conclusion, arriving at a certainty, should not be your goals. Those goals are antithetical to this undertaking.” These are the goals which the author must negotiate so that he is always in the condition of transcending or mortifying fact, implying that the mind can never be wholly at home in a world which has shown itself disagreeable to desire itself.

In a startling debut, Stephen Marche, Canadian and only twenty seven, offers a rare type of novel which combines epistolary technique to the DIN, the sidebar notations almost like marginalia, which undoubtedly give a kick to the narration and thrills the reader. Shortlisted for the 2002 O. Henry Prize, it is evident that young writers are doing it very well and it is going to be really tough for any competent writer in the coming future.

For the moment Raymond and Hannah—a sweeping must-read!