This Great Escape

by Andrew Steinmetz

  Michael, your STARmeter ranking is a dismal 3,802,520.

  AUDITION

  Til Kiwe. Robert Graf. Hannes Messemer. And then there was you. The King of America.

  There was something about you, and there still is something about you, Michael. The casting directors did not care about Him. About KP. Your father Karl Paryla. Certainly not John Sturges, who is renowned for casting excellent actors in secondary roles. Not Lynn ‘Never Forget a Face’ Stalmaster, Hollywood’s Casting Fuehrer. You earned your spot, Michael. What I cannot understand is how things ended up without you getting your credit. What did you sign? Did you make a deal? There’s some hint of the ignominy in the trench coat you’d been assigned by the sadists in Wardrobe. The sleeves that end just below your elbow are designed to shrink your ego. They must have been laughing it up in Make-up and Costumes. Rollickin’ in Make believe and Forgery. The insult is highly apparent. The message clear. You won’t be on-screen more than a minute. You’re not worth the bother. It was humiliating, wasn’t it?

  But what could you say?

  Danke.

  You needed that role.

  Vielen Dank.

  In a way, your life depended on it.

  THE STALMASTER

  It would be something to find hard copies of your agency contract and the autopsy report from your casting audition. But there’s no way, Michael. Stallmaster Lister Inc. came by the name honestly. I can’t get through to them. And as for the United Artists, who hold the movie rights, the website is a Wall, a big fat HTML FLASH anti-fast-loading JAVA script shit wall.

  WHAT THE CRITICS SAY (Revisited)

  They bravely play above the conventional … Steinmetz only a bit, but Michael Paryla clearly goes above and beyond (goes to excess).

  You go above and beyond, of course you do, Michael. You’ve got method for brains. And you’re becoming a star. Meanwhile, der kanadische Schriftsteller—like Herbert from Stuttgart: like a good Steinmetz—I stray ‘only a bit’ beyond the conventional. Why? Because my intimate group of advanced readers caution me to play your memoir straight; because I have a fictional editor who kills footnotes for breakfast; and because recycled sermons abound about the depressed marketplace; because ‘prospective publishers’ reply to the underground route of unsolicited submissions with hate literature against my literature. Still, there is nobody in this more real than you, Michael. I won’t forget that. I won’t let you down. But I won’t go easy on you, either. They say you go above and beyond—to great excess—show me some of that same spirit now.

  Michael Paryla’s hesitant, inhibited and dumb Bleichenwang has a bizarre attraction.

  Translation for deaf ears: You seemed out of your mind.

  FATHEROLOGY

  You were unhappy because you could not be like your father. This is the accepted wisdom, Michael: that you lived under intense pressure. But did you invent that, or were you born into it? Did the fatherology ensnare and entangle you? And yet you never had a mature relationship with him. He abandoned you when he abandoned your mother. What does it mean when the son is unhappy because he cannot be like his father? It’s a very squalid situation. It’s dirty, cheap and infertile in the imagination department. Shall we conclude, Michael, that you felt a certain impotence vis-à-vis your father? Dr. Franz, while digging around and making his pathology report, discovered an active gland in the pituitary region, which, according to him, ‘should stop functioning after puberty and may signify a continuing infantilism’. You were possibly envious of your father’s success and jealous of the intimacy he kept for your half-brothers, Stephan and Nicolas. What does it mean when myth and psychology collide in one person, i.e. your person?

  From the outside it looks like you lost your will.

  STATUS

  Refugee. Displaced person. Stateless. Undetermined nationality. Actor. Not very stable. Not very convincing.

  SUICIDE

  Never at the nadir. When the solution to a long-standing problem appears, then.

  When, out of darkness, your star is rising.

  So this fits.

  THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

  The Nightlife. In Hamburg you exploited it. To seek pleasure is not in the German constitution like obedience and loyalty and discipline and the rest: punctuality, efficiency, rigidity, denial, cleanliness, arrogance, persistence, responsibility. It was the North American in you. Or, the happy face of despair.

  YOUR COLLAPSE AND THE FAINT CRACK

  In my experience, Michael, the faint crack before the collapse is barely audible, but it is audible, and seemingly comes from within, an echo of the delayed manifestation of the world collapsing upon you from without, giving you just enough time to get the hell out.

  Were you confused by this phenomenon? Many a tunnel man has had to be pulled out by the ankles.

  BREAKDOWN: ESCAPE CONSTRUCTION

  A breakdown of the materials used for your great escape: 4 bed boards; 0 beading battens; 1 blanket; 2 pillow cases; 0 chairs; 0 20-man tables; 0 double tier bunks; 0 knives; 0 spoons; 0 shovels; 0 feet of electric wire; 0 feet of rope; 1 bed cover; 0 towels; 0 bed bolsters; 0 benches; 0 water cans; 0 forks; 0 lamps; 1 alarm clock; 3-4 sleeping pills; ½ glass of milk; 1 bottle of whiskey.

  YOUR ENTOURAGE AND THE GERMAN CIRCLE

  Eva held the German circle responsible for your death. This I conclude from aunt Irene’s letter, dated 15 April, 1967. The entourage included Margaret, Jerry, and Karl. Who else? Your doctor, maybe. Hearing news of your death, Eva claimed she had no energy to ‘write back and forth’ between Canada and Germany. She wanted to cut all contact. Germany was dead to her. After leaving the country in 1949, she would never return to Europe. And she couldn’t forgive you, Michael, for choosing Germany over Canada, your father over your mother, the ego’s entourage in place of true love. This is how I read the letters.

  MOTHEROLOGY

  Eva’s estrangement needs to be understood. At the end of her life, she was angry, still. Angry at you. And at what happened to you. But her resentment started much earlier. What started it all? You wanting to become an actor like him? For your mother Canada was a good enough stage. She had quit the theatre in Germany but never stopped acting. She was a regular-life thespian. But you had to do it the old-fashioned way. You had to audition. You had to prove yourself. You raised your nose and returned to Europe. You had forgiven what she could not forget, and forgotten what she could never forgive. Germany was wrapped up in Karl, and Karl in Germany. Eva wanted baby back.

  THE STORY OF JERRY

  Karl in a letter to Eva: The story of Jerry also drove us apart.

  What was the story of Jerry?

  I MARRIED MY MOTHER

  When your aunt Irene asked you, in 1959, during the early days of your courtship, what kind of a person Margaret Jahnen was, allegedly you responded: “Just like Eva! I married my mother!”

  Did you really say that?

  THE F-MATH

  To recapitulate, Michael, you were most sad because your happiness depended on impressing your Viennese father. You did your best to catch his eye. You ‘married’ a woman who reminded you of your mother. By marrying this woman you became more like your father. Now, Margaret’s son Jerry struggles in life without his father. And when you come along you are no good to Jerry. You treat Jerry badly, which is in character: Karl, leaving in 1938, treated you shoddily. The mysterious Jerry visits Eva once in Canada. Perhaps you saw in Jerry a twin, competition, another displaced son. Perhaps you saw in Jerry a boy without his father, a suffering creature, pathetic as yourself. When Eva met Jerry she felt strongly that he was a crank, lost and confused. She decided this was enough evidence to prove that his mother Margaret must not be a good person. His mother, according to you, Michael, was just like Eva.

  BLAME

  Specifically, Eva blamed Margaret for your death. Margaret, the woman who stole yo
ur affection. Margaret, who you compared to your own mother. In blaming Margaret for your death, Michael, Eva was laying blame at her own feet. Margaret was a proxy. Eva blamed herself.

  KARL AS WELL

  Karl, as well, blamed himself for your death. (Everyone wants credit.) Specifically, he blamed himself for not intervening, when he could, between you and Margaret. He mused that perhaps, together, he and your mother (your real mother: Eva) could have influenced and altered your course. He regrets that the right thing to do was once very simple and is immensely reproachful toward himself.

  LIEBESTOD, HIGHLY OPERATIC

  He who is too closely associated with death will be homeless on earth. Were you part of the delicate minority, smitten with life but unable to endure it? There is a word for this in German, Liebestod. Michael, did you suffer from made-for-the-opera Liebestod? Were your days on earth haunted? You, born in exile, a refugee, displaced since the day of your birth? You, travelling through? Only child of separated thespians, not part of this or that adopted country for long: as if your only sweet tradition was the absence of a place you could call home? Because of this condition you struggled in every moment to invent the fragile architecture of the present.

  BARBITURATES

  Downers. Why take them? Oblivion. For the gratification of oblivion. For the love of liebestod. Your aunt Irene and others acquainted with your case explained that after giving a performance you were high, high on yourself, and it was always late at night, and you couldn’t fall asleep. So you took pills to come on down from up high. Taking pills is an occupational hazard that you were not fit for. This is the accepted wisdom.

  INTRINSIC MYSTERY

  Outlines but no core. All talent and no substance. Gorgeously corrupt.

  I’m thinking of one another’s individual enigma and intrinsic mystery.

  In the end you were captivating, and captivated.

  NARCOTIC YEARNING

  In exile on stage in bed.

  You were restless and very tired at once. Exhausted from narcotic yearning. What a pastime. Pining for annihilation. What an exhausting leisure-time activity.

  CHILDHOOD: EVA

  You didn’t have the right of return. You didn’t have the shelter of, the security or even the insecurity of, childhood.

  There was no other-place, no haven or idyllic realm, to which to return.

  The closest thing in your mind was Germany.

  Eva knew it would be a mistake to return there, to return to zero. She knew that it would be a mistake to play at a homecoming. Michael, going home is not as simple as that. You can’t escape that way. Life is not that easy. You can’t just make it up.

  She knew your time would be wasted. That your time would be short.

  CHILDHOOD: ACT ONE

  It was unfortunate that you had set your sights on the same career as your father. Being the son of a great actor might have had its advantages, but, Michael, wasn’t it also an oppressive burden, a permanent insult to your ego?

  To seek approval from him was to lower yourself into a jam of fear, envy, pride, jealousy, kindness.

  DIFFICULTY IN BEING

  Was there some difficulty in being, for you? Difficulty being you? Wherever you went melancholy followed, back from the theatre, to your apartment, descended from on high, out of the darkness, onto the flatness of your chest. Did you try reading, propped up by pillows, until you couldn’t keep your eyes open any longer?

  We have all read of artists who ended it because they felt sure they could not practise their art anymore. Michael, did you feel that? That you could not act anymore or any better—you had reached the pinnacle and had decided to rest where no one could reach you—and that was the end? You couldn’t live without acting and you couldn’t act without drugs and alcohol and milk.

  That was neither living nor was it acting, but escaping slowly to death.

  WE DIDN’T KNOW

  This is what many Germans claim. ‘We didn’t know.’ ‘We suffered, too.’ Look Michael, you’re not responsible for the Holocaust, but you are responsible for your own reaction to it. I have heard that Eva taught you to keep quiet about the past, which amounted to your keeping quiet about childhood and Germany. She schooled you to keep quiet about who you were and where you came from. There had been exile and immigration, and there had been assimilation. Denial and identity repression could have fucked you up really badly. But it’s no excuse.

  BACKGROUND TO YOUR JEWISH BACKGROUND

  On paper you were Paryla. But Eva was née Steinmetz. And if you search ‘Steinmetz’ in the Central Database of Shoah Victims you’ll find an Eva Steinmetz from Hungary. There is even a Michael Steinmetz born in 1861. I found Hermann Steinmetz, same as your uncle’s name. How real was your Jewish background? Here are the number of registered murdered Steinmetzs by country: Poland 304; Hungary 168; Germany 61; Austria 20. Bertha Steinmetz, who was murdered in Auschwitz, was your first cousin once removed, same as I am to you.1

  BEING NOT GERMAN NOT JEWISH

  It turns out you were neither German nor Austrian, not really Jewish, not Canadian, and no Steve McQueen. You were not really anything.

  BEING NOT STEVE MCQUEEN

  With all your uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, you were a natural at Being Not Steve McQueen. And in my book Being Not McQueen is just as obercooler as Being McQueen.

  OBERCOOLER STEVE MCQUEEN

  You remember him surely. His StarMETER ranking went through the roof. In 1974, McQueen was the highest paid movie actor on the planet. On set, I bet you got on easily with McQueen—you who had mastered basketball and YMCA dances, had America down. And you shared something with McQueen. Maybe you discussed the matter. McQueen’s father was a stunt pilot. McQueen Sr. abandoned Steve and his mother when Steve was six months old. He was brought up by his grandparents, since his mother was an alcoholic. What did Steve get out of this? An unquenchable thirst for speed. McQueen once claimed that he could only relax when he was going fast. As a matter of fact, he badly wanted to jump the frontier fence into Switzerland at the end of the movie. I bet he had it in him, too. But there was insurance to consider. Insurance is a bitch when you’re uber-famous.

  ACTOR’S BLOCK

  What is actor’s block? Depression, maybe. Lack of will and the inability to make decisions. Loss of drive and interest in sex. Not wanting to be you when you are you. They say unless you feel the fire to act, do not become an actor. Because you will need it. You need that fire to pass over the threshold of self-consciousness into the essence of the character.

  I understand that you once had fire. Once upon a time you had it, the same way many writers profess the existential-must to write. True or faux?

  MAMA’S BOY

  In the afternoon, as is well-known, you liked to take a short nap. To catnap. Which is a form of pretend-sleeping, or anyways it is less threatening than a good night’s sleep, for an insomniac.

  At night, it was different. In the dark, you pulled off petals one by one, and the whirlwind of characters made the bed spin.

  You may call me Francisco. ‘Tis bitter cold. And I am sick at heart.

  You may call me Sempronius, secretary to the king.

  Cosimo de Medici.

  Stand and unfold yourself. You come most carefully upon your hour.

  My father was a sort of spectacular artist. He arranged the last two coronations. That was how I got my job here in the palace.

  You see, my mother doesn’t love me. She wants to have love affairs, to wear light-coloured blouses. My father was a member of the petty bourgeoisie, as you know—although he was a well-known actor too.

  I was despicable enough to kill this seagull today.

  When I see the curtain rise on a room with three walls, when I watch these great and talented people, these high priests of the sacred art depicting the way people eat, drink, make love, wa
lk about and wear their clothes, in the artificial light of the stage … when I’m presented with a thousand variations of the same old thing, the same thing again and again—well, I just have to escape, I run away.

  It was a moment of mad despair, when I had no control over myself.

  I’ve got magic hands.

  You may call me Konstantin Gavrilovich Trepliov, the Russian Hamlet.

  In modern parlance, a Mama’s boy.

  1956: YOU

  Behold Mike. Momma’s boy. Trepliov. Behold: you are lost.

  So.

  You leave because Canada is a desert and you will never be found if you stay.

  You leave to find your footing.

  You, a non-entity, will impress them all.

  1967: YOU

  You were en route to the top! You were on the right path. You had matured. You were becoming a success, becoming a real star. Nothing could stop you. You had the chops, handsome looks, language facility. You had it all and some kind of malleable face. Some unnatural trace of your race. Nothing could slow you down, unless—one little thing, Michael—unless you had crashed, and were broken inside. Unless you were some kind of mental cripple. I’d like to share with you my conclusion about this, drawn at length, from Karl’s letter to Eva, dated April 29, 1967. A letter principally about the autopsy report and your war scars.

  CARPE DIEM

  These scars to your myocardium, and the question of whether or not you, Michael, suffered from jaundice in childhood, beg further research.

  SCARLET FEVER

  Scarlatina, a streptococcal infection. You may have been exposed about the time Eva volunteered in a DP camp—Switzerland: 1943-45. An outbreak was confirmed one day when she was on duty; and your mother was placed in quarantine. The problem was there was no one at home to take care of Michi. You would have been seven or eight, a ripe old age for developing rheumatic fever as a complication from scarlet fever.