Raymond and Hannah

  Acclaim for Stephen Marche’s Raymond and Hannah

  “Raymond and Hannah is full of graceful musings…. The language [Marche] uses is so dazzling, so unsentimental…. He has produced a work that is both beautiful and confusing. In other words, an honest love story.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Seductive…. I don’t think I’ve ever had better vicarious sex—certainly not in an English Canadian novel. This is sex as voracity, fuelled by the birth of volcanic, insatiable love. Marche describes almost no specifics, yet burns up the pages with need and joy. Shame is banished. The id rules. The spirit revels.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “In its deft melding of the spiritual and the sensual, the poetic and the prosaic … Raymond and Hannah can’t help but recall the young Leonard Cohen.”

  —The Gazette (Montreal)

  “Stephen Marche is a wonderful writer, and Raymond and Hannah is a rare combination of heart and wit. An impressive debut.”

  —Brian Morton, author of A Window Across the River

  “In his startling debut, Marche offers up a rare hybrid: the page-turner prose poem…. The novel offers utterly convincing glimpses of both characters’ lives. Especially full-bodied is the evocation of Hannah’s struggle to understand her Jewish identity, not just through study but through the city of Jerusalem itself. In this lushly romantic book, love between Jew and atheist gentile resembles the divided city, simultaneously impossible and actual.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A smart and sexy first novel…. While the novel follows the traditional narrative arc — boy meets girl; boy loses girl when she leaves town in search of her roots; boy gets girl back (maybe) — there are a few elements that mark the tale as being uniquely of our time…. Love, it seems, is not a race to the finish but a complicated ongoing struggle to achieve a union with another, body and soul—a remarkable insight coming from a young writer.”

  —The Toronto Star

  “The book, which in many ways captures the most perplexing of modern Jewish challenges, is revealing in its honesty and a must-read for those who want to truly understand this contemporary generation.”

  —Canadian Jewish News (Toronto)

  “Modern, romantic, smart, erotic and heartbreaking. His title characters are cynical and wary of love talk, and his prose is sparse, unflowery and devoid of cliché. That he composes in such a range of tones is a testament to his talents…. Marche’s captivating love story holds us in as much suspense as the year’s finest thrillers.”

  —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

  “Stephen Marche’s debut novel, bearing all the hallmarks of Leonard Cohen’s influence—poetic language, urban hipsterism, explicit sexuality, Jewish philosophy—is a rare creature…. Marche’s writing is both muscularly clear and infused with powerful poetic rhythms…. The talent is unmistakable, and the approach, while not unprecedented, is refreshing. Given the trends in CanLit over the past couple of decades, Raymond and Hannah feels like a much-needed roll in the hay after a long, demoralizing dry spell.”

  —Quill & Quire

  “An original and moving love story for our frazzled, high-tech, long distance era.”

  —Emma Donoghue, author of Life Mask

  “A wry and sexy international love story.”

  —New York Magazine

  Dedication

  To Sarah

  Hannah thinks about the night

  I must bring home a man. Sadly, only the bookish will avail to me tonight since there are just academics at Paul’s parties, dust to dust to dust. The early fall light is gorgeous over the iris skirt on the bed, and change the sheets, Hannah dearest, just on the off chance.

  Raymond thinks about the night

  Six days minus Aletheia, and at least five sexless weeks before we finally ended. Why you’ve been eating so much. All that cheese. All the beef. Fat and greasy and grubby, the stained shirt. Why you’ve been reading so much. Ha.

  The night

  The sunset has the range of shade that a thick cover of pollution produces as a consolation for city night lacking stars. Violet greens, pink navies, ruddy oranges flood Hannah’s attic apartment through a half-dozen skylights. Though Raymond lives in a basement, the weird light manages to startle him, too. August is coming to an end, and so is the evening. There will be parties everywhere tonight where people go to meet strangers who want to meet strangers. There will be a backyard crammed with candles in glass orbs and plenty of booze and a crowd.

  How to attend

  If you are male, be five-foot-ten and weigh one hundred and sixty pounds. Be light-haired with blue eyes. Try to have a longish face, and be twenty-five. Your cheeks should be stubbled, and your back should be stooped from carrying bookbags exclusively on your right shoulder. You should also be a candidate for a doctorate in English literature on a seventeenth-century prose writer, preferably Robert Burton. A blue shirt with brown cords is the appropriate dress. In short, be Raymond.

  If you are female, be five-foot-six and weigh one hundred and thirty pounds. Have dark eyes to set off your long dark hair. Wear no lipstick. Have two grey hairs already, though you are only twenty-four, and have slightly spaced teeth if at all possible. Wear a tight black shirt and a purple, tasteful skirt. Be smiling. Be Hannah.

  Bring wine priced between nine and fourteen dollars.

  Champagne

  Shouting over shouting, everyone in the packed kitchen is bubbling up. Young flesh senses the long winter coming. It’s as if the party is one big talk, springing from distinct places in gushes of the same laughter.

  Hannah is pouring champagne into a clear plastic cup.

  “Champagne,” Raymond says, “oh dear.”

  “Want some?”

  Raymond rustles through a cabinet and comes up with a coffee mug and a line. “Everything is permitted now the champagne is out.”

  She pours his Santa Claus mug full of bubbly stuff. “It does make the night more interesting.”

  Other kitchen conversations

  Where to get the best pork dumplings. The merits of echinacea. The poetics of automobile advertising. Che Guevara. The systems of South American ant colonies. Allergies to nickel.

  Preliminaries

  “What are you here for?” Hannah asks Raymond.

  “What am I here for? I was invited.”

  “You know Paul.”

  He nods. “And you?”

  Hannah sips her champagne. “I’m here to meet men.”

  A moment’s pause, while Raymond casts a critical gaze across the offerings of the room. “What about Jim?”

  “Which one’s Jim?”

  He points to a hippie leaning on the radiator across the room, a large-bearded man in jeans and a checked flannel shirt whose laughter drunkenly booms like dropped timpani over the light chatter. “I realize that I’ve just ruined it by pointing, but maybe it’s all for the best. It wouldn’t have worked out with Jim anyway. He’s married or something. How about Roger?” He bugs his eyes in the direction of a man in overalls. Hannah looks, arching her elegant neck to see the scruffy poseur affecting boredom beside the refrigerator. “The one in overalls. His name’s Roger. Actually I have no idea who he is. I made up the name.”

  She frowns. “That one’s not bad. Excuse me.” She reaches for the champagne and refills their cups.

  “My name’s Raymond,” he says.

  “Hannah,” she replies.

  They touch cups, and Raymond again scans the room, apparently displeased with its contents. “The pickings here really are a bit slim. I suggest we inspect the other rooms to see if this is all the night has to offer.”

  A tour of the house

  Raymond and Hannah don’t look at oth
er men. It so happens that a series of prints from the Yellow Book is hanging on the walls of Paul’s apartment. As they wander, Raymond gives elaborate explanations of the nineteenth-century etchings. The final images are in the bedroom, low above a futon overflowing with coats. The room is almost quiet; they are alone.

  Hannah’s first impression

  At least he doesn’t talk about himself all the time, but he does talk a lot, doesn’t he?

  Raymond’s definition by negatives

  Not indirect. Not dressed like a whore. Not dressed great. Not desperate. Distinctly not ugly. Not an academic. Not society. Not unintelligent. Not poor. Better not drink too much. Waste not. Want not.

  Continuation by way of drawing

  “It’s very beautiful,” Hannah says, stooping to level her eye with the picture of Salome inspecting John the Baptist’s head. “But you haven’t found me a man to take home.”

  Raymond, standing, stares down at her crouched back. “It’s so hard to tell at parties like this. One stranger is as strange as the next. But Hannah, let us go back to the party to find you a man.”

  Hannah sips her drink, and rises. “I do need more champagne.”

  Paul’s family

  “What are you writing about?” Hannah asks. They are turned toward each other, leaning on the kitchen table now crammed with empties, full ashtrays and assorted garbage.

  “Robert Burton. The Anatomy of Melancholy.”

  “You’re doing a Ph.D. on melancholy. You’re an expert on melancholy.”

  “I know nothing about melancholy. That’s why I study Burton. Can we please stop talking about this? I’m boring myself over here.”

  “How do you know Paul then?”

  “I knew his family back in Halifax.”

  “When were you in Halifax?”

  “Look at him.” Paul is slouched drunkenly against a banister on the other side of the apartment. “Looks like a football player, right?” She admits that he does fit the profile: six-four, two-forty, built. “His whole family are aesthetes of the highest order. Frail little English people. His brother, last time I saw him, was wearing a black crushed-velvet suit complete with green carnation.”

  She is giggling over the rim of her cup. He takes a sip, a small one.

  “It’s all rebellion. Paul got a football scholarship to university. It crushed his mother. He’s the one white sheep in the family.”

  Her smile opens to a laugh, and she throws her hair back. Her crooked teeth are lovely. “Outside?” he offers.

  A private corner

  They go out for air and find, in a corner of the yard darkened by wind-extinguished candles, two fold-out lawn chairs. Other guests heading in their direction turn aside at the sight of two strangers, probably exchanging secrets in the dark, in the garden.

  Luck

  While he is asking her if she makes it a habit to ask strangers to find her strangers, pigeon shit splatters on the shoulder of his jacket.

  “Oh, honey,” she says, laughing.

  Raymond excuses himself as decorously as a maître-d’. When he returns, he has washed the pigeon shit from his shoulder, and the fold-out chair, the seat beside the woman named Hannah, is still free.

  “Isn’t there a saying that if a pigeon shits on you it brings good luck?” she asks.

  “I’ve never heard that.”

  “Well, if it does you must tell me.”

  He looks up nervously into the branches overhead. “You don’t want to move, do you? No, that’s too stupid. Like lightning right?”

  “You were asking me a question.”

  “Yes.”

  “The answer is that yes, I have in fact asked other men to find me men, but neither finder nor found were strangers.”

  “But that is more in the nature of reconnaissance. Not the same thing.”

  “It’s close enough, Raymond.”

  “It’s not close enough, Hannah. But I have a similar tale.” He pauses to fix the telling before he tells.

  Picking up

  Secrets about sex. Both Raymond and Hannah recognize that the only way to pick up is to exchange secrets of a sexual nature. What other women do and do not do. Male fears and disgusts. Questions of etiquette: flirtation, penetration, deviation. Betray the past bit by bit. Kiss to tell to kiss. A woman who would never lie down. A man who always, without fail, brought fruit to bed. Strawberries. Pineapples. In a blessed place, it would be enough to describe a memorable orgasm. Instead, in this fallen world, conversation with potential lovers wobbles, searching always for the lower, more dangerous music.

  In the dark, in the garden

  Subtle intrusions of gentle wind extinguish the candles one by one. Their endings keep time more accurately than clocks. The dark presses in on Raymond and Hannah’s stories, and their stories rise up, one by one, like lighted candles. The sounds of the party inside drift past them and are gone.

  Raymond and Hannah find a lower, more dangerous music

  Raymond finds himself saying, “Why am I telling you this? It’s the champagne. One-night stands do leave me blank, however.”

  “Blank?”

  “Empty. Never again.”

  She looks at him sideways. “Is that an unbreakable rule?”

  He pauses. “Is that a proposition?”

  “Yes.”

  He pauses again. “Yes.” Done. Obliviously and coolly, they head inside for their bags, coats and lame excuses to mutual friends.

  Raymond considers the silence

  Keep it silent, Raymond, silence along the ride. Your words would fuck it up and reach. Nowtime. Keep your mouth shut. Ferme ta bouche.

  Conversation in a taxi

  “I live in a basement.”

  “I have an attic.”

  “Can we go there?”

  “I think yes, there.”

  First journey

  The streets proceed tiresomely through the neighbourhoods in which each house tries to be more ordinary than the next. The driver likes dangerous speed but he’s still too slow for the passengers in his back seat. They overtake two cars on the bridge. They drive up one-way streets the wrong way. Paid hastily, the driver tears off to race other lovers to other apartments for a little money, and he’s gone before the reverberation of the slammed car door. It’s a sweet fast song stepping swiftly up Hannah’s flights of stairs.

  Hannah with her keys

  Tarnished burnished metal, bronze silver silver. You’ve found your keys before. You’ve done this before, Hannah. The rooms inside are clean and bare. There. That one. Open the door.

  Second journey

  To the bedroom, though, ever so slowly they go. Raymond hesitates to her, and to her bed, where Hannah grabs his neck, pulls him down into her breasts, holds him. She kisses him long, running her hand down his chest, and his fingers fall to her thigh, surprised. Right from the beginning, they must take a rest, going back through extraordinary webs to unbutton their clothes.

  Two nudes

  When there’s nothing left to unbutton but themselves and the other.

  Toronto aubade

  Transport trucks, go slowly. Pull yourself over on the side of the road. Bring the night with you into your bunks. Let Raymond and Hannah anticipate endlessly on stairs up to attics. Nights in August in Toronto are too short besides. And go slowly, street-washing men. Just let the dirt be dirty for now. Let the streets seize with filth. Let your engines stall, and stop the morning from coming. And more slowly, smokestacks; in fact, completely shut yourselves down. Nights in August in Toronto are too full of light besides. For once let all the power in you not flow, and leave Raymond and Hannah asleep in bed alone.

  Cities don’t listen

  Here come the Scarborough cars. Here come the cars from Oakville and the subways full of commuters. In a final thrust after a long blue vein, the sun arrives, its ore, and it wakes them. It wakes Raymond, anyhow.

  The rooms

  The woman is curled away from him, and her name, he believes, is Ha
nnah. Raymond extricates himself from the duvet, moving quietly, to ensure she will not wake. At the last moment, he almost reneges. He wants to run a hand through her dark hair. But then there are the unexplored rooms he has quasi-accidentally stumbled into. He takes his clothes into the hallway to change there.

  Little to see. There are no books on the bookshelves. There are nails in the walls but they hang no pictures. There are no plants and no chairs and no tables. The only objects that could be called furniture are two green suitcases, one open, the other tucked away in a corner beside a mountain of cardboard boxes. Add to this the light, which is unbearably bright, railing down from multiple skylights at the odd angles of the attic. The apartment is so bare it rattles.

  At least there is coffee, in the freezer, beside frozen peas and a bottle of Belvedere vodka. Otherwise, the fridge is empty. There are two coffee cups in the cupboards, then nothing. He checks cupboard after cupboard and they’re all cleaned out. Peas, vodka and coffee. This woman knows how to live. She takes it black, one imagines, and he cannot believe just how much fun it is to be meeting women in these cool, brilliant adventures again.

  A man in the house

  When Hannah emerges scratching her mussed hair, there is a man in the apartment. His name is something. Raymond. He is sitting on a cardboard box, drinking coffee. “You take it black?” he is asking.

  Conversation in a bare room

  They settle themselves in the nook between the wall and the suitcases, the most inviting space on the bare floor. Light from a window at waist height angles onto them hard.