This Great Escape

by Andrew Steinmetz

  Perhaps I have been too harsh on Einz. This early, she may have a Kopfschmerz or better yet a Kephalgie, which sounds more impressive. If so, I have just the remedy. Aspirin. Hier nehmen Sie ein!

  I exit to go find Giesing’s office, which is around the corner and down the hall. The doctor is not in her office either. So I return to the Theatersammlung, where life goes on as normal and I am not worthy.

  Then, a woman strays in.

  “Herr Steinmetz, Hello.” Dr. Giesing greets me with a neat, forensic grimace, dressed in a powerfully-odd pantsuit. “Your coat you cannot bring inside. Leave it you must on a hanger.” Yoda is spoken here by the chief archivist.

  Dr. Giesing directs me to a table inside, where I can sit and review the materials. The rules are simple. I may use my camera to copy archival photographs but am not permitted to use a flash. Newspaper clippings should be photocopied.

  “This is wonderful, thank you for all the work you did.” I’m greatly indebted to Dr. Giesing and would like to express my gratitude, formally, before sitting down to my meal of Michael.

  “Oh, no.” Horrified, she is. Nothing personal will do. No gratitude accepted by the archivist.

  “You’ve done a lot of work.”

  Her features cloud over. Again with the tight grimace, like she is passing a foreign emotion. Dr. Giesing inches sideways on the carpet and clasps her hands, a gesture that seems to indicate she is pleased, also, with the results of the research she has done on my behalf, even if such requests are routine and the results are nothing out of the ordinary.

  “I never would have found all this without your help.” She flinches visibly at the word ‘help’. I realize my mistake. Professional you are.

  I fully expect the frigid Dr. Giesing to exit stacks left, unassumingly, and leave me to it, when she defies my powers of intuition and observation and pronounces something very personal about Michael.

  “It’s difficult for the son of an actor to become an actor. And his father, Karl Paryla, was such a strong actor.”

  Dr. Giesing has been giving Michael more than routine thought.

  Junker von Bleichenwang

  In his penultimate role, Michael played the part of Junker von Bleichenwang, a young country squire, in Thalia Theatre’s 1966 production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will. The German adaptation is called Was Ihr Wollt. The press photographs and newspaper clippings retrieved by Dr. Giesing are primarily from this production, which evidently was well-received by the critics.

  The first clipping is dated 23 September 1966. Hamburger Anzeigen und Nachrichten. Under the heading “Eine turbulente Komödie (A turbulent comedy)”, Walter Gattke writes:

  Das eigentlich nebensächliche Trio der komischen Gestalten, das mit Herbert Steinmetz (Junker Tobias), dem blendenden Michael Paryla (Christoph von Bleichenwang) und dem einmaligen Hubert v. Meyerick (Malvolio) glänzend besetz war, liess das Haus in Lachstürmen erbeben.

  It’s stirring to find his name in German newsprint. Michael Paryla. Right there. Digital representation is nice, but this is the real thing. Dem blendenden Michael Paryla. I have you at last. The Dazzling Michael Paryla. I have you on your soil, a theatre in Germany. But there is something else. You are not alone. At once I am off to find Dr. Giesing, who has found sanctuary at a table in a clearing located deep in the stacks.

  “Did you see this?” I point, handling the giant scrapbook awkwardly. “Herbert Steinmetz. One of the other actors was ‘Steinmetz’.” Dr. Giesing is nonplussed. “No relation, but … ” But still.

  “Yes.” Giesing relents. “Herbert Steinmetz.” She peers sceptically at the scrapbook, anchored at my hip. “An actor from Stuttgart, I believe.”

  Well, yes. An actor from Stuttgart or from Hobart or Nairobi. It does not matter. That’s not what I meant. By coincidence, opposite Michael on stage was a Steinmetz, though not of his mother’s clan. What are the odds? Dr. Giesing isn’t a betting woman. Fair enough, if disappointing. In contrast, I’m inclined to generate pseudo-scientific hypotheses on the back of my hand. I’m all for jumping in with two feet and getting it wrong the first time. What did it mean for Michael to find himself on stage opposite an actor who shared his name—his mother’s maiden name? The Steinmetz name. Did he identify with Steinmetz?

  I return to my table of Michael without an answer. There is a lot to digest. I have my laptop but no WI-FI, and hence there shall be no real-time flirting with Babelfish, or, for that matter, with any other quick and loose online translator. My initial reading of this material is therefore captive to my own rickety algorithms, assimilated from two years of university-level study at Michael’s alma mater, McGill. Hence the blizzard of elliptical dots:

  The trio of … actually incidental … odd comic characters … Herbert Steinmetz………the dazzling Michael Paryla (Christoph von Bleichenwang)…..and the unique Hubert v. Meyerick … brilliantly presented … left the house in gales of laughter.

  Translation: His part was unimportant (‘actually incidental’) and yet Michael was dazzling in his own, essentially non-speaking way. Bravo. My excitement now is tempered by the realization that, as in the movie, his part is minor. He was a gifted actor. But he didn’t have major roles. He had minor parts. He didn’t live long enough to have more.

  Alas, there is something uncanny about his Junker von Bleichenwang. I find more fragments of the same:

  Michael Paryla gave his Bleichenwang outlines but no core.

  —Friedrich Hartau. Boy Goberts Regie—Sieg im Thalia mit Was ihr wollt. Hamburger Morgenpast. 24 September 1966.

  Empty of personality, charmingly silly, the living plaything, Bleichenwang (Michael Paryla).

  —Jochen Oldach. Fang an mit Shakespeare. Boy Gobert inszenierte “Was ihr wollt” in neuer Bearbeitung am Thalia-Theater. Berzallorfen (?) Zeitung. 24 September 1966.

  Michael Paryla et al, mercilessly exaggerate these peculiar characters.

  —Wien. 30 December 1966.

  The anonymous reviewer in Wien uses the word ‘Outrieren’ to describe Michael’s performance, one month before his death. Outrieren is Austrian slang for laying it on thick. The review was printed in Vienna and it’s plausible that Michael’s father took notice of it. If so, I’m convinced that he’d have remarked on the name Herbert Steinmetz. The name Steinmetz would have had meaning for Karl, surely. And what would he have made of Michael’s carrying on as Junker Bleichenwang?

  The jokers present themselves in so shallow and pleasant a manner, Michael Paryla’s needy Bleichenwang … They really do carry on.

  —Christian Ferber (Die Welt. 24 September 1966).

  They bravely play above the conventional … Steinmetz only a bit, but Michael Paryla clearly goes above and beyond (goes to excess ).1

  —Walter Schroder. Bild. 24 September 1966. Under the heading: ‘Manchmal ist es zu lustig’ (Sometimes Too Funny).

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

  —H. A. Trauthig. Stacker Tageblatt. 27 September 1966. Ein Fest für Augen und Ohren. Hamburger Thalia-Theater trumpfte auf mit ‘Was ihr wollt’ (‘A Feast for Eyes and Ears: Hamburg’s Thalia Theatre Triumphs with “What You Will”’).

  Translation for deaf ears: Michael seems out of his mind. Restrained and blocked, his Bleichenwang is quirky and absurd. Scanty. A scurrile attraction.

  It’s unanimous then: bizarre and bewitching, outlines but no core, excessive. Michael is dazzling. Out of his mind?

  ‘Der Kaiser Von Amerika’

  After a half-hour break which I spend strolling through the campus, keeping my distance from the deportation platz, I return to the archives where I don’t find a scrap—not one newspaper clipping that mentions Michael in the role of Sempronius in Thalia Theatre’s January 1967 production of Shaw’s The Apple Cart, Der Kaiser von Amerika.

  “Why do you think
this is?” I take my grievance to Dr. Giesing.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It makes no sense.”

  Dr. Giesing sighs. She won’t comment on that. On the other hand, Dr. Giesing is modestly excited to present me with an olive green workbook. She was literally on her way to bring it to me. Soufflerbuch is handwritten in the top right corner. Herr Michael Paryla is crossed-out.2

  I am holding Michael’s prompt book for the play, the same he used during rehearsals and for performances of Der Kaiser von Amerika. Together, Dr. Giesing and I look inside. The typescript is edited in pencil. Passages of text are underlined, notes scribbled in the margins. Whole lines from the play have been erased, others modified. Shaw goes under the knife. Even him.

  “Could this be his handwriting?” I ask Dr. Giesing.

  “Maybe,” she answers. “But, probably not. This was the job of the soufleur.”

  Turning the pages, I scan the German. I’m only superficially acquainted with the play itself, a political satire about the fictional English King Magnus and his elected Prime Minister, who argues for the end of the monarchy. Act i opens wwith Sempronius and Pamphilius, young political secretaries of the king, seated at desks and facing each other, in an office of the royal palace.

  To begin the play, Pamphilius asks Sempronius: “What was your father?”

  Sempronius is startled.

  So am I. Startled that the question of fathers is established in the first act of Michael’s last play.

  Sempronius: My father?

  Pamphilius: Yes. What was he?

  Sempronius: A Ritualist.

  Pamphilius: I don’t mean his religion. I mean his profession. And his politics.

  Sempronius: He was a Ritualist by profession, a Ritualist in politics, a Ritualist in religion: a raging emotional Die Hard Ritualist right down to his boots.

  Pamphilius: Do you mean that he was a parson?

  Sempronius: Not at all. He was a sort of spectacular artist.

  There are many critical reviews of the production but not one mentions Michael’s turn as Sempronius. None that I find. Which is odd, if you consider his portrayal of Junker Bleichenwang—an equally small part, in a play produced by the same theatre house only months before—was noted in a handful of newspapers. Why not Sempronius? One line of thinking might be that the bizarre and bewitching Bleichenwang had bizarrely bewitched and undone Junker Michael. That’s not very cogent though. Alliterative, okay, but not reality-based. Not germane. Another hypothesis might be that Michael was going through a crisis of some sort—with Margaret?—and the wear and tear was beginning to show in his work. It’s possible. His last plays were presented in repertory. The Shaw opened in January, after Michael had been home to Munich, briefly, at Christmas. His aunt Irene and grandfather Emil Steinmetz had seen him then, and for the last time, over the holidays. Irene’s letter to Eva several weeks later provides a glimpse of the condition he was in. He was very tired … He had apparently been complaining a lot about insomnia for some time; this was in addition to financial worries and friction with colleagues. On top of that, there was all his work and the insane theatre life … he could not cope with that kind of life, neither physically nor psychologically. No such corroborating evidence is forthcoming from Hamburg’s ensemble of theatre critics. His Sempronius—tired or terrific—is ignored. Frozen out. Equally noticeable is the matter that the Hamburg newspapers make no mention of his tragic passing, which occurred on the evening of the 12th performance of the play.

  The Vorstellungbuch—Dr. Giesing has dug it up: Thalia Theatre’s Yearbook—does describe in straightforward language the theatre’s staff’s efficient management of the events behind stage, and onstage, the eve of Michael’s death. But even here there is nothing in the way of commemoration. No addendum to the entry of 21 January 1967, which records that the actor Michael Paryla was a no-show at curtain time.

  So, no public word of Michael’s passing, no mention of Sempronius in the press, and no eulogy in the Vorstellungbuch. He goes out with his whispering myocardium, without leaving a note. I don’t understand it. Nothing in Bild or Zeitung. Nothing in Hamburger Morgenpost.

  “Isn’t it strange?”

  I have opened the scrapbook, and turned over page after page. I am asking Dr. Giesing, keeper of the Theatersammlung, for a second opinion.

  “Yes, it is strange,” Dr. Giesing eases her way into the subjective realm. I sense her reluctance to wade in deeper, but continue to push my case.

  “The critics mention Bleichenwang, but nobody touches Sempronius. What’s going on?”

  Dr. Giesing is not a betting woman. She’s already made that abundantly clear. She’s an archivist, not a polemicist. Her role is to preserve the past. Interpretations cost extra. They are personal, and may incur emotional wounds. In every direction, people may get hurt. For her it’s all no-fun and no-games until, for a second time over the course of the day, Dr. Giesing cracks. Yoda is back.

  “I to you said, it’s difficult for the son of an actor to become an actor.” She pauses. Yes, I remember. “And his father, Karl Paryla was such a strong actor, too.” Long rest here. Several beats. “But this is not a story about acting. Your story is about a son and a father, a father and his son.”

  Dr. Giesing has opened a door and, promptly, she leaves for her cubicle in the stacks. What kind of work is it, I wonder. I’m inclined to think Giesing takes full advantage of the library’s peace and quiet to rehearse and prepare for moments like these. For the meticulous delivery of, But this is not a story about acting. Of course not. Who said it was? No fucking way. Your story is about a son and a father, a father and his son. A father and his son. There you go. Yoda and uncle Gerhardt (Gerhardt of the thesis “I think he was sad because he could not be like his father.”) and John Leyton (the Leyton of “Following in the footsteps of a famous father makes it very difficult.”) appear to be on the same track here and weaving the same reductive Oediplot. Giesing and her gang are pushing the limits. Giesing’s gone and nudged Michael’s story from the private to public realm, pursuing the universal and potentially more appealing story about the larger forces at play: Sons and Fathers, and about the archetypes and myths that amuse the unconscious and in hindsight seem to make a mockery of free will. Facile? To me it is. Which is one reason why I must keep telling this story until I have it half-right.

  I carry on—making copies of the press photos, newspaper clippings, and theatre programs, careful that I capture the sad essence of the olive Souffleurbuch, with Michael Paryla in the top right corner, touchingly crossed-out. I scan a bunch of articles, and as I do all this I read superficially about Ingrid Andree and O.E. Hasse and ‘Die Charmante Paula Denk’—lead actors in Der Kaiser von Amerika—who have done splendidly in the roles of Orinthia, King Magnus, and Lysistrata, respectively. I’ve been three hours but I don’t want to leave here until I find something that might explain Michael’s ghost turn in Der Kaiser von Amerika. Sure enough, after another thirty minutes, I find what must be exactly what I am looking for: some kind of reward for perseverance, an answer to my faith in the complete omniscience of the archives.

  The headline reads “Thalia-Theater gastiert in der Wiener ‘Burg’”. A single paragraph in the 18 January 1967 edition of Hamburger Abendblatt. ‘Wiener’ catches my eye. The ensemble is taking its production abroad for a guest appearance at the Burgtheater, February 2-8.

  Michael’s unheralded Sempronius was headed for Vienna. Was this the trigger? Three days after, Michael was dead.

  “Where next are you travelling to?” Dr. Giesing inquires. “Your next stop?”

  “Curio-Haus.”

  “Oh yes, so close. Five minutes.”

  Before leaving, I ask Dr. Giesing if can take her photograph, standing outside the doors to the Theatersammlung. Initially flustered by the request, her face conforms to utter neutrality. She passes a hand across her f
orehead, brushes aside non-existent bangs: and I’ve got her, a memento to take back home for my own archives, the better that I can remember her.

  *

  Michael Paryla counts lives on his fingers. Junker von Bleichenwang in Boy Gobert’s Thalia Theatre production of Was Ihr Wolt.

  The Curio-Haus. Rothenbaumchaussee 11. The ­building is named after Johann Carl Daniel Curio, the founder of Hamburg’s first teacher’s association. Once a meeting point for unionists and artists, today the building houses private enterprises. On the sidewalk, I scan the commercial billboard: Jura One individuelle Examensvorbereitung. STYLE HOUSE personal artist management. Axel J. Nolte RECHTSANWALTKANZLEI (Solicitor). Appeased, I walk through the archway and into the courtyard and look through the windows into the historic ballroom. Was it in here? No telling. I return to the building front, where I find the plaque:

  This building was established in 1911 for the society of the friends … named after Johann Carl Daniel Curio … In 1946-48 the trial by the British military court against SS-members who were responsible for crimes in the KZ Neuengamme took place here.