On February 26, 1913 the owner of the Kazan hospital on Voznesenskya Street Medical Doctor Girsh Klyachkin hospitalized exhausted consumptive boy Gabdulla Tukay. His last thirty-six days, the poet lived near this doctor.
The owner of the biggest Kazan private hospital with permanent beds and the department for physical therapies the famous doctor Gregory Abramovich (Girsh-David Abramovich) Klyachkin risked — under the Charter of his hospitals, approved on May 22, 1903 by Minister of Internal Affairs of Russia Zinoviyev he could not take infectious patients to the hospital. The hospital was under the constant supervision of medical department of the Kazan provincial government, where regularly urgent statements and information about patients were sent. Admitted to inpatient unit patients had to submit for registration at the local police station, their residence permit, and the founder kept them in his safe till discharging the patient from the institution. To hide a patient with a terminal, the most contagious form of pulmonary tuberculosis was not easy.
Why did the experienced medical doctor and businessman take a risk? Did he know something about the poet from his friends who came on the eve? Did he flip through a dozen of thin booklets with his poems, brought by them not understanding any word? Or on February 26 at a reception in his cabinet, having met already unearthly gaze of almost weightless young man with the face of the saint, looked behind the fatal line, felt sorry for him?
According to the Charter Klyachkin had a right to use poor patients free of charge, at his discretion. In the hospital there was a free bed for them in a general ward. But Klyachkin knew about the continuous hysterical consumptive cough with purulent sputum and blood, sleepless nights in the asphyxia and profuse sweating and placed Gabdulla Tukay on the ground floor in the private room with two windows, looked in Molochny Lane. So it was easier for everyone.
After his six-meter unheated room in the hotel «Bulgar» for the seriously sick man who had insurmountable difficulties with a toilet, washing, cleaning, cooking, barely moved his legs Gabdulla found himself in a completely different life. In Klyachkin’s warm light ward with a high ceiling, water pipe, a porcelain wash basin; a bed with feather pillows, warm duvet, crisp white linen, soft pajamas, flannelette bathrobe, towels, slippers, clean dishes were ready for him. The paramedics and nurses cared and helped. They fed him three times a day to the full. When did he have it all last?
For advice Grigory Abramovich invited his friends and colleagues, medical doctors, who had in the surrounding streets own medical dispensaries – physician Roman Albertovich Luria and ophthalmologist Abram Aronovich Elinson. The verdict of doctors was sad: consumption, one lung is completely destroyed, the second one had only a small part; the old, launched tubercular process of eye, blindness; heavy exhaustion, pulmonary heart disease. No more than a month.
Many years later, one of the leading physiotherapists of the USSR, one of the founders in 1920 of the Kazan Clinical Institute, the future State Institute for Advanced Medical Studies named
after V.I. Lenin, head of the clinics and department of physical therapy Professor Gregory Abramovich Klyachkin repeatedly told the family and in the clinic about the spring 1913, about the month next to the dying boy, great Gabdulla Tukay. In 1913 Klyachkin was forty-seven, Gabdulla was twenty years younger. But in the endless human stream of the large hospital Gregory Abramovich unmistakably felt in a young man being favoured by God, his spiritual light and wisdom for his age, as if he had lived a long, long life. They talked in the evenings. Gregory Abramovich brought Gabdulla books from his library. Gabdulla knew that he was dying, thinking about his will and destiny of the rights for the publication of works — publishers, scenting prey, staged the race for them. Last came with the agreement to already agonizing Tukay. Klyachkin in those days sent to Gabdulla his lawyer.
… Gabdulla Tukay was sick for a long time. Tuberculosis of eye was from infancy. Pulmonary process caught up later. In 1907 in Kushlauch village on the next draft board he was released from military service due to tuberculosis. In Kazan poor living conditions of Gabdulla, in a cold, malnutrition tubercle bacillus did their job with impunity. For a long Gabdulla didn’t go to the doctors, even though he knew that something was wrong.
Here are some of the Press 1911-1913 period.
At the end of 1911 Gabdulla Tukay visited his aunt Rabiga Amirova in the Uchile village. Later she recalled: «He could not get out of the sleigh by himself. He had no belongings, no money. Almost for a week he could not get out of the bed. And his mood was depressed, he didn’t really say anything. » Rabiga cooked food, and her husband fed Gabdulla.
In «Yalt-Yolt» magazine from January 21, 1912 Tukay wrote about himself: “Whether from excessive fanaticism, or for some other reason, since my childhood, I didn’t believe medicine. And always compared doctors who saw the cause of a disease in «upset nerves», with wise women who explained every disease by the pestilence».
In the same newspaper, he admitted: «after returning to Kazan, I decided to live all by himself, nowhere to go, and nobody to take, to eat and sleep, to read and write, to hurt and not to moan». Then he just moved to a new room in the hotel where he met many bugs and rats. Tukay could not sleep, and wrote that «If the room you have is beautiful, then there will be rats. I have here and there torn fur coat.(Yalt-Yolt», March 11, 1912).
Tuberculosis patients at the end of the disease often start to rush from end to end, looking for salvation. Tukay goes in Troitsk for kumiss, then to St. Petersburg, in the clinic of Professor Paul where the diagnosis of tuberculosis was firstly heard. Then again in Troitsk. Homeless. Lone. Dying. Of course, he was scared, and bitter. Strength was gone, and the moment came when he resigned to the inevitable. Fatih Amirhan, recalled: «Not only to us but to him it was clear that every cough takes a piece of his life. But he didn’t like to talk about it. In the last days he preferred to be alone. When he was sitting alone, deep in thought, then seemed he come to thoughts, inspiring him peace of mind. After these minutes he talked about life lightly and cheerful».
And in this last, most difficult month at Dr. Klyachkin hospital it was warm, hearty, light, do camphor injections for the heart. Gabdulla works. On the nightstand by his bed there are books and manuscripts. He edits one-volume edition of four hundred of his best poems. Writes a poetic
testament, the article «The first thing after waking up,» «Two notes» in «Yalt-Yolt», poems, satires, notes to friends. The last from 28 March: «Dear Zaynab hanum! I sent all I had for the eight issue. I would like to see the first correction. Besides, it would be better to publish all these poems in one issue. It would be more significant. Although I feel that the censor will delete one or two stanzas from «Words of Tolstoy». Then all must be printed. G. Tukay».
On April 1st three friends of Tukay brought the photographer to the hospital and persuaded Gabdulla to make pictures. On the portrait he is alone, his face enlightened, calm, gaze out of reach. On the other picture there are three behind him: friend of youth Gabdulla Kariev, journalist Shigab Akhmerov and writer Fatih Sayfi-Kazanli.
The next day in the evening G. Tukay was gone. According to the Charter, an urgent hospital ticket signed by founder with the designation of the time and method of treatment, and passport of Abdulla Tukaev Klyachkin handed over to the local police department.