"God Is a Rusyn": Anthology of Contemporary Carpatho-Rusyn Literature

Mykhal Sandovych

Mykhal Sandovych MYKHAL SANDOVYCH / Michał Sandowicz (1939–2003) was born in Warsaw to a Lemko-Rusyn Orthodox priest and a Russian mother. Sandovych completed his studies in engineering at the Warsaw University of Technology (Politechnika Warszawska), where he later worked as a professor of civil engineering . He became interested in his Lemko heritage in 1994 when his grandfather Maksym Sandovych, an Orthodox priest who was shot by the Austrians in 1914, was canonized by the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Mykhal Sandovych organized the Warsaw branch of the Lemko Association in 1999 and established the Rutenika Foundation for the Support of the Lemko Minority in 2001. He died in 2003 after an automobile accident. Under the strong emotional influence of his revitalized Lemko genealogy, Sandovych began to express his emotions in literary form, and he wrote short journalistic pieces for the Lemko journals Besida and Zahoroda. 176 POLAND [From Tsy to lem tuha, tsy nadiia] The Professor He jostled in his maliukh98 on a curved mountain road and wondered whether he was doing the right thing by taking this trip. Wouldn’t it be better to stay home with mother? Now in her eighties, she wanted him by her side more then ever, perhaps conscious of the imminent end of her life. But this time it was she who pushed him out, saying: “Go Mykhal, after all it’s your brother.” Yes, it is true, Piotr Bortniański, the famous professor and surgeon, was his brother Petro. It had been so long since they had seen each other that one could say they did not know each other at all. It was probably sixty years. Petro came here, to this village in the backwoods, two years after his parents returned from Zakhid, the west.99 Mykhal had just started attending primary school, but Petro was already in medical school. He laughed at his starŷ, his old folks, for returning to this poverty, to this slave work, and he could not understand his father, who continuously repeated, “Well, now I’m home.” When his father was struck by a tree in the forest, Petro did not come for the funeral. It was too far, too expensive . At that time he was in America on a fellowship. He was sent there by the medical school because he had passed his final exams with flying colors and, of course, he had joined the Communist party. Meanwhile Mykhal and his mother were getting more and more accustomed to misfortune, to Lemko bida. To tell the truth, there had been a chance to meet on the other side of the ocean, at a performance of a Lemko ensemble in which Mykhal played violin. But Petro did not come to see the performance, even though the Ukrainian newspapers all over America reported that they were coming from Poland. Now, he, Mykhal, a forest ranger like his father, with his head already turning grey, is going to see his brother. Will they recognize each other in the crowd of guests? Actually, he hadn’t gotten an invitation, but the chief editor of a Gorlice newspaper, in which Mykhal sometimes placed short articles about the life of Lemkos, sent him— almost by force. “Mr. Mykhal, write something about Piotr Bortniański. After all, he’s from here. All Poland talks about him. They show him on television. He has saved so many lives. He’s such a famous surgeon. Go Mykhal, by all means.” So he is going. He inwardly laughs at himself for his journalistic 98 In Polish, “little one,” a commonly used nickname for FIAT 126P, the smallest car manufactured in Poland during the Communist period. 99 In Lemko-Rusyn, the commonly used term for the western territories of Poland where Lemkos were forcibly resettled in 1947. MYKHAL SANDOVYCH 177 hobby. He wrote short pieces about the fate of the Lemkos, their history, but in reality he never considered himself a journalist. He wrote because his heart dictated it, because he wanted to tell the Poles, so they would know about us. He invented a pseudonym for himself—Jan Górski. Why should they know who he really is? With these thoughts, he got on the road to Katowice.100 It was in Katowice where the illustrious jubilee celebration was to take place to celebrate his brother’s sixtieth birthday. Mykhal arrived by ten o’clock in the morning. At the gate leading to the...