Paul Robeson (103 page)

After a comprehensive set of tests, the Buch clinicians found a heart “insufficiency”—not unusual, they said, in a man of sixty-five—a slightly enlarged liver (possibly a toxic reaction to drugs), and “a secondary colitis with incipient ulceration,” perhaps also drug-related. Additionally (and peripherally), the GDR doctors diagnosed Paget's disease, a condition—of unknown etiology and no psychiatric import—involving an abnormal amount of bone deformation and known to be fairly commonplace. Katzenstein did not feel he could rule out some underlying organic cause for Robeson's condition—since little was (or is now, for that matter) known about the chemistry of the brain—but felt that ultimately the extraordinary pressures he had been under for a decade were themselves sufficient to explain his collapse. Castor oil with every meal quickly put Robeson's digestive system in good order. And getting off sedatives not only made him immediately more alert and talkative but also
improved
his ability to sleep (as is now well known, a prolonged use of sleeping medication can produce a reverse effect). Passing through East Berlin two weeks after the Robesons' arrival, Elliott Hurwitt was impressed with Paul's improvement (as was Sam Rosen a few days later, though he was not impressed with Dr. Katzenstein himself). Hurwitt wrote Essie soon after that he felt sure “Paul is in what is, for him, the best possible medical environment that could be found.” Coming to the Buch Clinic has “turned out to be a very fine move,” Essie reported home. To Helen Rosen she wrote that Paul “now enters into discussion. He stammers, and is slow on the up-take, but on the beam, right on the beam.”
⁵⁰

But she did not report that Dr. Katzenstein had suggested that “what
is left of Paul's health” would have to be quietly conserved. Nor did Essie tell anyone—including Paul—that she had been given bad news about her own health. Explaining why she was flat on her back in the hospital, she wrote home airily about “a bad flu,” “an infected gall bladder,” and “general exhaustion from the long siege.” But in fact the diagnosis was a good deal worse. Although the London and Moscow doctors had continued to give her a clean bill after her periodic checkups, the Buch doctors found evidence of recurring cancer and in fact told her it was terminal. Determined to live out her life at full tilt, Essie went off to collect a “peace” medal she had earlier been awarded; the ceremony had been delayed until she could appear in person.
⁵¹

Paul was not told about Essie's condition, or about his own prognosis; he was encouraged to believe they were both on the road to full recovery. And certainly he seemed greatly improved, able to participate in more socializing within a period of a few weeks than had previously been possible over many months. It was protected socializing—a few friends, like Stephen Fritchman, Joris Ivens (the filmmaker), Earl Dickerson (the black executive and activist), Henry Winston (the CPUSA leader), Vladimir Pozner (of
L'Humanité
), and Helen and Scott Nearing, would drop by for carefully limited visits. Sometimes Dr. Katzenstein would take Robeson to feed the ducks in the park, or on supervised outings with himself and his wife to the park, the zoo, to shop, or to drop in briefly at the Soviet-German House of Culture. Diana and Franz Loesser visited Robeson at Buch several times, and had him out to their house twice for tea; Diana noted with delight the gradual improvement—when he first arrived in the GDR “he looked very strange and ill, burnt out,” but within a few months he “was talking to people and you got the feeling he could cope, though a very sick person.” A few expeditions were more elaborate still. Paul took an accompanied trip downtown to be measured for a new overcoat, and on one notable occasion not only took tea at the Soviet Ambassador's residence but stayed for an extended chat about grandchildren, the “Negro Revolution,” and the hockey match between Russia and Canada. Essie described the visit (with her usual optimistic overelaboration) as fluent and light-hearted.
⁵²

The Robesons had Thanksgiving dinner with Kay and Aubrey Pankey and their other guest, Ollie Harrington, the black American cartoonist, now living in Berlin. Pankey had left his singing career in the States in search of wider opportunities and had found them in Eastern Europe, regularly performing in concert and settling in the GDR. The Pankeys hadn't seen Robeson in a dozen years, and Kay Pankey recalls her shock on opening the door: “I saw a tall, gaunt, thin man; he was all eyes. My heart just went out.” Ollie Harrington, who had also been living in Europe for a decade, was equally stunned at the sight of Robeson: “I'd never seen such a change in a man.” But Harrington, a warm and witty storyteller,
decided to try to break through to Paul—“Intuitively I knew he was there, somewhere,” so “I started telling anecdotes we used in our ‘special times' back in Harlem, tales about ‘the stupidity of Charley' alternating with ‘the ridiculous reaction of the Brothers.'” Robeson slowly responded: his eyes gradually came alive, and he even laughed out loud a few times. “I haven't seen Paul throw back his head and laugh so heartily for a very long time,” Essie later wrote the Pankeys in thanks. “It was like a visit home in the old days, with none of the bad past.” To Harrington, the evening showed that Paul “
was
there; he was not a brain-damaged individual; communication could be established—but on
his
terms.” On his way out of the door, having already lapsed back into melancholy, Paul impulsively grabbed Ollie's hand. “Thank you, thank you,” he said over and over.
⁵³

Yet Paul's ability to go out more exacerbated his unease in one sense: the very fact that he could see improvement and enjoy himself unleashed deep fears of incompetence; the accelerated activity itself fed his anxiety about being once more asked to “perform.” Dropping in one day with Dr. Katzenstein to visit the Soviet-German House of Culture, he roamed around comfortably and had coffee in the restaurant, and was even able to tolerate a few people staring at him as if to say, “Is
that
Paul Robeson?” But then an official did recognize him, gathered others around and persuaded Paul to sign the visitors' book. He seemed to take it all in stride, but the next day, according to Essie, “he was in a bit of a tizzy,” and she finally found out why: he was worried about whether he had written something “really adequate” in the visitors' book. When he told Essie and Dr. Katzenstein what he had written, they assured him that it was fine and that, besides, nobody expected instant wisdom on such an occasion. Paul seemed only partly comforted.
⁵⁴

Essie, who was still keeping the outside world at bay, had withheld from Paul for months the sad news that his beloved brother Ben had died of cancer of the esophagus in July. She finally told him in November, after Paul had written his brother a little note. She left no record of how he took the news of the loss of someone who had been such a loving anchor to him. Probably it was without much outward reaction, for, as Essie had once written to Helen Rosen, “… nobody knows what is in … Paul's mind.” However, in mid-November he headed into another down cycle, and Essie reported to the family that he told her he “just cannot make it any more.… I am too tired. I haven't got the energy. Maybe the voice is still there, but I haven't the energy, and it takes energy and nerves. And I just haven't got them anymore.” He had felt “exhausted,” he told her, as far back as 1956, following prostate surgery, and had never really mended. He had been able to make a “supreme effort” now and then—California in 1957, Carnegie Hall in 1958,
Othello
in 1959, Australia in 1960—but only with “great fear and worry.” (During the run of
Othello
, he now confessed to her for the first time, “every performance was an ordeal”: he always expected
to forget his lines and once did.) He dreaded any prospect of yet another “come-back,” yet at the same time he worried over the fact that he had never managed to get to Africa or China and still felt he “should make some kind of contribution and gesture of respect” to them. He told Katzenstein he had “failed” his own people, had been “unable to bring forth the victory,” “could not help them any more.” Essie conveyed his fearful questions back home to the family: “Will people understand? Will they think he has changed, as the Western Press insists? What can he say? What can he do???? And last and most important, he feels he should be home participating in the Negro struggle. But how??? He isn't up to personal appearances.…”
⁵⁵

Essie tried to ease Paul's mind, joined in the effort by the Buch clinicians, and seconded by friends back home like Helen Rosen. Together they urged him to retire, in body and conscience; he had done his share, and more; it was better to end on a dignified note; now was the time for a younger generation of black leaders to shoulder responsibility; perhaps after he had recovered his health he might again consider an active role, but for the time being he should set his mind at ease by formally announcing that the public phase of his life was completed, by medical command. Paul said he agreed—and went on worrying. He could not shake a lifetime of trying to live up to those perfectionist demands his father had placed on him in childhood, and which he had long since internalized as his own, to live up to the dictum that he should always do better and more. He could never quite believe that he had done
enough
to allow him to retire with honor from the field. Particularly, he could not shake the wish to rejoin in a significant way a black-rights movement he had done so much to inaugurate, could not give up the hope that the new generation of black activists would make some request for his services that he would be able to fulfill, that together they might establish some continuity of purpose, some mutual acknowledgment of interconnection between the generations.
⁵⁶

Paul seemed unable to leave it alone, continuing to fret about whether he had a future, and if so whether he wanted one. Essie (at least as she reported to the family) told him
he
had to make the decision, had to tell her what he wanted to do, where he wanted to go. She drew up a list for him of the possible places they could live and the pros and cons of living there. On the morning of December 7, 1963, he told her he had made a decision. He wanted to go home—home to the States, to Jumel Terrace, to his grandchildren, to his people. Essie had several more go-rounds with him, but he held to his decision: “This is what he seems to want,” she reported to the family, “so we are going to have to go, as the British say.” She added, “I have a
VERY
good feeling about it myself.… I know your welcome, and your concern will warm his heart, and relax him very much. He knows you wont expect him to
DO
anything, just
BE
. That's what everybody here wants, and hopes, but
HE
doesn't leave it at that. He feels he
should be doing something, saying something.” Dr. Katzenstein felt Paul's decision to go back to the States was the right one. He was pleased that his effort to “treat the whole person” had led to some improvement, that Paul had gained weight and appeared more animated in manner; yet Katzenstein felt “there was no way of knowing if he stayed longer whether he would improve more.” He hoped Robeson “would find a peaceful home.”
⁵⁷

On December 17 Paul and Essie flew nonstop to London to collect some of their things from the Connaught Square flat and to take their leave of friends. On December 22 they boarded a BOAC jet for Idlewild Airport, New York.

Robeson was going home, as he had wanted to for years.

CHAPTER 25

Attempted Renewal

(1964–1965)

Three Port Authority policemen ran interference through the reporters as Essie on one side and Paul, Jr., on the other escorted Paul to a waiting car. As newsmen tried to throw questions at him, Robeson smiled away in benign silence. Only twice did he respond. When a television reporter stuck a microphone in his face, Robeson whispered that he had nothing to say for now but might “later on.” Asked by another reporter if he was going to take part in the civil-rights movement, he said, “I've been a part of the civil rights movement all my life.” As the repetitive question “Are you disillusioned with Communism?” continued to resound, Essie jumped in to say, “No, he thinks it's terrific—he always has and he always will” (thereby further feeding rumors that her function was to muzzle him).
¹

A “Muted Return,” headlined the New York
Post
. “Native Son Robeson Back Without a Song,” chorused the
Daily News
. The conservative black New York
Amsterdam News
referred to Robeson in its lead sentence as “apparently disillusioned” and predicted he faced a congressional probe into his politics and a snubbing from black civil-rights organizations. Dorothy Kilgallen reported in her syndicated column that she had “received hundreds of letters protesting the fact that he was allowed to return”; she herself favored it as “a propaganda victory for our way of life.” Congressman William S. Mailliard protested Robeson's return directly to the FBI; the Bureau replied that as a citizen he was entitled to come home. This did not mean that J. Edgar Hoover was ready to give up his pursuit of Robeson: he instructed the New York Office of the FBI to “ascertain the extent of his activities.” The office wired Hoover that, “not being certain” of Robeson's attitude toward Communism, it “is not making any recom
mendation for an interview by newsmen upon his arrival back in the US”—an open declaration that it would and
could
manipulate the press.
The New York Times
featured Robeson's return on the front page, described him as “much thinner and not his old vociferous self,” accounted for his illness as due to “a reported circulatory problem,” and reported that his “comfortable income” was still secure. To a separate profile piece the
Times
affixed the headline “Disillusioned Native Son.”
²