This old electric tram has its charm. The ride is precisely slow and slowly precise, and for days I have used a single ticket which I punched myself when I boarded the first time. It’s the honour system, Michael. Is this news? An honour system. Wherein citizens act in good faith according to the law and their own principles. There are no Sicherpolizei and likely no fugitives on Tram 25. The morning-showered businessman in the seat ahead holds the Süddeutsche Zeitung like a full windshield. The Party paper used for a prop in the movie—that’s history, long gone and good riddance. There are no bloody losses nowadays to report, except on Wall Street. Next stop Grodner Strasse. Nobody wears a Fedora. No more. Fedora, leather trench coat, are passé. Now ADIDAS. The black tracksuit and white stripes make it official: society has demilitarized. Materialism is the new fascism. Leisurewear is supreme. It’s altogether a different world. The Berlin Wall fell more than twenty years ago. Outstanding, isn’t it? Altogether different, and yet on cue, up stands the gentleman at his stop—Tiroler Platz—wearing (no kidding) a green felt cap with a feather and all. Well, this is Munich and Bavaria. Some things never change. From the southern limits of the city you can see the Alps. And up there, invisible to the eye, is the former Nazi resort and residence Berchtesgaden, where Hitler and his top darlings received the first Gestapo report of the escape sixty-six years ago.
Am Wildwechsel. You are buried at the deer’s pass, a street named for a timid creature, under a canopy of pine trees. Beside you, the family Moser—Ruhe in Frieden: Rest in Peace—and Benno Martin 1898-1967. The stone is roughly hewn, a sturdy mass; it looks to have punctured the earth’s crust from below. Moss and lichen have taken to it, and the pine, planted by your father days after the funeral, has matured and must have deep, tangling roots in the grave itself. There are no dates engraved—not your year of birth, not your year of death—and no inscription except Michael Paryla and Margaret Jahnen. You escaped with hardly a scratch.
Is any of this news?
Insofar as arrangements made with the cemetery administration are concerned, the plot is taken care of by your father, who took out a fifty-year lease on this ground.
And then?
I don’t know, Michael. And then—who knows? You better than me. I’ll go pester one of the gardeners. They should have an idea. Meanwhile, I confess the cemetery itself is very peaceful. Serene and humid and green. The stones and pebbles and bushes and the trees. The earth and sky. I’ve come to pay my respects. But the route has not been easy, and what I’ve uncovered, the little I know, is a burden. For example, your father did not attend the funeral. Overcome with grief, Karl could not make himself come. I understand, but I still think that, no matter how unpleasant, for fathers as well as for sons, there is such a thing as your duty, obligations you must perform. Yes, like an honour system. I’m also saddened to inform you that your mother did not travel from Canada to be at your funeral, and nor did she ever take a trip to Munich in all the years she outlived you. After leaving Germany in 1949, she would not set foot again in this country. In 1967, she wrote her sister and your aunt Irene that she did not have the ‘means’ to come. Financial, or moral? Does it make a difference? The fact remains that neither of your parents were at your side during the funeral. I find that hard to believe, and difficult to accept. Margaret came, and her son Jerry, and your grandfather Emil, and Irene. But not your own parents. How could they act so shoddily? Why couldn’t they pull themselves together for your sake, and for their own?
You need the dark, I know, and you crave the quiet. But Michael, our roots are mysteriously bound together. You’ve had enough time alone, undisturbed by light and words. What is keeping you?
Karl did come several days after the funeral. He described his experience to Eva. How he visited this place and held you in his arms. He wrote a sympathetic letter about the afternoon he spent here at Waldfriedhof. He describes holding the deceased Michael (sorry) in his arms and addressing your memory. He imagined you alive. He resurrected you, for an hour, a guilty hour—for a communist like him—but it was relatively easy for him to do: so strong was your living memory in him. You had presence and je ne sais quoi after the curtains closed. Isn’t that the story of your life? The first time I read his letter from 1967, it brought me to the edge of tears. I let them go. I’m not at all religious, nor a communist—not even an actor, but flesh and blood and a human being —and therefore I feel Karl and Eva’s crushing pain as I stand here.
How should I put it?
How to unravel and disentangle the household textiles, work loose the old bed sheets and garments? How to read between layers and layers of resin-soaked regret, and not miss the amulet or the wax plaque placed over the incision upon your heart? How to go about it? How to unravel being from nothingness? Where stop? At which station? Breslau, Vienna, Zurich, Berlin, Sault Ste. Marie, Montréal, Munich, Hamburg.
And here in Munich again, the end of the line.
I haven’t forgotten your question: And what then? After fifty years. I’m thinking about this while I walk the moss, past your neighbour Benno Martin: 1898-1967, to speak with the gardener, who is tending to a family plot occupied by five.
“Please, I have a question.”
He turns from the ground and grimaces, a stout man in brown overalls with a seamstress’s pin pad for a chin and deep red lips.
“No English,” he says, and makes himself upright from a kneeling position. He steps unsteadily, and the boxes of plants roll onto their side. “Bulgarisch,” he points to himself, and then goes about wiping the dirt from his hands and from the front of his overalls.
“Cigarette?” He will find someone who can help me, his boss speaks English. Meanwhile, killing ourselves slowly by the same filthy habit is the best way I have ever found to break through walls, build mutual trust. He points: there she is, driving a miniature pickup truck, laden with plants, down the narrow path. He yells out her name, which I don’t catch. She stops the truck and jumps out of the cabin. She reaches into the cargo bed, turns and marches over to our smoking party—an earthy blonde, wearing high rubber boots, tugging a watering hose.
The Bulgarian points: he wants to talk to you.
“Bitte,” I begin.
“Yes,” she nods. “What is it?”
I point to the grave at our feet. “I am family.”
“His or hers?” she interrupts.
“His. Michael Paryla.”
“This grave is taken care of by another gardener. But maybe I can help you.”
“I hope so.”
“What is it?”
“The plot was paid for by his father for 50 years. But what happens after that?”
“He is dead when?” she asks, taking the cigarette from the Bulgarian and raising it to her lips.
“1967.”
“So in 2017 … ” She is doing the math. “ … Is that right: fifty?”
“Ja,” the Bulgarian breathes sharply.
“For as long as it is paid, the gardener will come to keep the plot. But in 2017, then, the stone comes down. The ground is dug. And another one goes in.”
“Really?”
“That’s the way it is,” the blonde gardener smiles compassionately at me. “When you die, you lose your spot.”
“Yes.” The Bulgarian knows it all too well.
“Except, if you are very famous.” She drops the Bulgarian’s cigarette and destroys it under the heel of her boot. And continues: “If you are famous, then you are important to history. And your place is kept for visitors. Or maybe, you have lots and lots of money?” The woman points to a solid structure on the other side of a stone boundary fence. There it is: a grand mausoleum built with black granite, a piece for the permanent collection.
Did you hear, Michael? When you die you lose your spot. The mighty stone comes out, the ground is dug, and another like you goes in. Alles in Ordnung! Except if you are famous.
/> Or very famous.
That’s not you, I’m afraid. You’re not very anything. You’re very underground, okay yes, but very famous, no. Steve McQueen, that one is uber-very famous. Richard Attenborough is Knighted. James Garner, TV loved Garner. These are examples of the very famous. McQueen, Attenborough, Garner, and Bronson, Jackson, Leyton and McCallum. You’re the very opposite. You are extremely unknown. So you see the great irony is not that you played a Gestapo officer despite your background—the irony is that everybody has seen that film, and so everybody has seen you, but nobody knows you or remembers you or ever remembers seeing you. And if you really do have a father-complex, more people, many more people, millions in fact, have seen you in The Great Escape than ever watched Karl perform on a stage.
What does this have to do with anything? I’m working on that, trust me. I’m following every trail to the end, shifting links und rechts, Hansel and Gretel, left and right.
What comes to mind is that your memory is alive despite what the gardener said. In 1967, when Karl, your father, stood where I am standing, in front of your stone, he held you in his arms. He had his method, a thespian’s method, granted. He held your face close to his and kissed you, your living memory, because he could not imagine you dead. He could not fathom you gone. I find myself in the opposite similar position. I, who never had the pleasure, hold you, the dear dead boy, the dead boy, dear.
I stood an hour at the foot of your grave.
You gave me no sign. Weren’t you even listening? Acht du! Act you little Michael. Assume a virtue. Because we’re not done. Toughen up. We depend on each other. This has as much to do with my escape as it does with yours. Michael, neither of us is going anywhere until we get this straight.
I’m writing a letter, to be read aloud, to you, my so-called dead cousin.
Dear Michael
LIEBE MICHAEL, THE COMPLICATIONS of childhood are limited to the heart.
Always.
So much depends on the little red wheelbarrow.
*
I am making a death mask. Of you.
*
How should I begin?
*
Want to know what I think? You were exhausted, through, and at such a juncture, cardiac massage was useless.
And anyway, they could not get in, the door was locked. Hamburg is a wild city. You locked yourself in, and you hid. You shut out your mother, you were on unstable footing with your father, there is something pathetic in your choice of Margaret as a partner, and you were callow in your treatment of Jerry. You came
out only for a night of theatre. How each role … touched you … how together they deformed you. If you had survived all that, allegedly you would have become some kind of nutcase.
*
You did not leave a note. Amateur. Instructions would have been a nice gesture. And what about your method? Did you even have one? Amateur.
*
I have the autopsy report, letters from your Karl, Irene, and Emil, newspaper clippings, photographs and oral reports, and I have a list of plays and a list of theatres, and the movie—I have that on DVD: The Mirisch Company Inc., Presents The Great Escape—and recently I got my hands on a Penguin edition of The Seagull and located an online source for GB Shaw’s The Apple Cart. I have your Souffleurbuch. I have that you died in the afternoon. I have that at 8:00 pm you had not showed up at the theatre. And yet I have nothing.
*
Since early days you were coached to avoid confrontation, and schooled not to speak about the past. These days what do you have to lose?
*
I’ve read your diary from 1949 and I know about Lahr, the DP camp, and your first crepe-sole shoes and about your first mole. I know about the YMCA dance and the diphtheria outbreak, and about the water purification plant. I know about The Mikado. I know about your dog Romeo. I know about basketball and smelts and the clarinet, I know a lot about Eva. I know you had the mumps, and you had your tonsils out. I know your final marks for Grade 13. I know about the professor’s wife at McGill University, I know about The Adonis and Trepliov and Claudio, I know about your chilly audition for The National Theatre School, I know about Janine and about Lois and Ken, I know about meeting your father in the park in Munich and eating strawberries. I know about Margaret and Jerry (but not everything and hardly anything at all). I know about your financial worries and friction with colleagues, and I know you loved the nightlife. I know about your insomnia. I know about the milk and barbiturates and about the whiskey. I know about your collapse in Bremen. I know about that one testicle and about an episode of jaundice. I even know things you don’t know about yourself: the findings of your autopsy report, your burial place, what people have said about you since. Yet I don’t really know too much. I don’t know your insides at fourteen when you arrived in Canada. After several years, did you feel German still, or Canadian with a difference? I don’t know what you expected when you arrived back in Germany. I really want to know if Romeo bit you on the face. Did you lift your arm? What about your stepfather, Antoine? Allegedly he was serene, a Zen-like person. Why didn’t any of that rub off on you? Was it a moment of mad despair?
Lastly, Michael, how deep was your Goonskin?
*
Not everyone is calling it an accident.
Maybe you could no longer breathe. Simple as that.
*
I am inserting below The Case of Michael Paryla. Please have your experts read it, and send me any questions you have about it. As you can see for yourself, it is thorough and professionally done.
What They Say About You: A Review
“He only ingested four pills, which should not have been lethal.”
–Your aunt Irene, in a letter to Eva
“I had a death mask made of Michi, it turned out beautifully.”
–Your father, Karl Paryla, in a letter to Eva
“Michi’s life is behind him—he had a good heart and that is probably what’s most important. He will not be forgotten, and we all will go the same route in the end.”
–Irene
“Certainly, a grown man is no longer a child that one can raise.”
–Karl
“Michael’s name of course was Paryla and no one would assume anything.”
–Janine
“I think he was unhappy because he could not be like his father.”
–Gerhardt, your cousin Johanna’s husband. (You might remember meeting him in the lobby of the Kammerspiel in Munich.)
“Michael was such a straight, honest person. And he wasn’t anymore. He did things later … I just shudder.”
-Eva, with the magic hands.
“He was tapped for a leading roll in a theatre production. The premier performance was very successful. He received rave reviews. The celebration of his success lasted into the wee hours of the morning.”
–Sybille (You might remember your cousin, who visited Munich that summer of 1962.)
“It’s difficult for the son of an actor to become an actor. And his father, Karl Paryla, was such a strong actor, too. But this is not a story about acting. More it is the story about a son and a father, a father and a son.”
–Dr. Giesing of the Hamburger Theatersammlung. (You would not have met her, but she is organized and quietly keeps your memory alive.)
WORDS THAT DESCRIBE THE PREDICAMENT OF BEING YOU*
*From my perspective, not yours
Displaced. Envious. Gifted. Lost. Lost Son. Disenfranchised. Dethroned. Underdog. Underling. Underprivileged (Versus European half-brothers). Prodigal. Unproven. Non-entity. Insignificant. Role-player. Practical joker.
MAKESHIFT DEFINITIONS FOR WORDS WHICH DESCRIBE THE PREDICAMENT OF BEING YOU
Displaced—It’s obvious you never belonged anywhere.
Envious—Of your half-brothers, of your father’s affection, of
your father’s talent and success.
Gifted—Your je ne sais quoi.
Lost—It’s obvious you didn’t know who you were or wanted to be.
Lost Son/Prodigal Son—In your dreams you were the great one, you left home and would return home a triumph, lost and found.
Disenfranchised/Dethroned—Your father left when you were four. You grew up in exile from the skilful affection of your father, although you were the rightful heir.
Underdog—It was the North American in you. What can I say. You attended Sault Ste. Marie Collegiate and fooled around with The Mikado while your half-brothers were raised in Vienna, in the shadows of a great theatre family.
Underling/Underprivileged—It was the European in you. You seethed that Canada did not ‘value’ art.
Unproven—Isn’t it obvious.
Role player—You played one of the watchmen in Hamlet, not Hamlet.
Practical Joker—Mixing milk and whiskey, marrying your mother, playing some blond bimbo on the train. What more can I say.
Non-entity/ Insignificant—See your STARmeter ranking below.
STARMETER RANKING
“STARmeter rankings provide a snapshot of who’s popular based on the searches of millions of IMDb users. Updated weekly, these rankings also graph the popularity of people over time and determine which events affect public awareness.”
This Great Escape Page 21
