The Last King of Poland
Andrew Riddles
Yes, but never mind all that – I meant the other time it happened. Remember? I told you about her. Her name was Polina. I saw her at the party at Josh’s place in Notting Hill. She was wearing a sparkly top and jeans and she asked me to pour her a drink. We sat outside on the garden wall. For some reason – maybe because he was hosting a party – Josh had mown the lawn that afternoon and it smelled like every childhood summer day you can remember, growing up in southern England. The back of Josh’s house was the red brick of every house in Britain I had ever lived in or seen. I was drinking Martini Rosso, neat, from a half-pint glass. And she – Polina – was drinking red wine. It was Bull’s Blood, that horrific Hungarian wine we used to drink as kids because it was so cheap. It turned your teeth red. When she had finished her glass, I offered to go and fetch her another, but she wanted to come with me.
This, I thought, was going spot-fucking-on. Oh, she was hot as last July, she seemed keen, and she didn’t come across as someone who was impressed by fancy cars or a shirt with a collar (which was great, because I owned neither). As I poured her more Bull’s Blood, she asked over the din of the music, “What did you study in school to become a web developer?”
I laughed. “My degree is in history.” This was true. When I had started university, the internet hadn’t existed.
“History, huh?” Her mood seemed to sour. She added, “I bet you know nothing about Polish history.”
“Well,” I said, “I know enough to get myself into trouble.”
“Really?” She crossed her arms. “Tell me.”
Now Polina was staring me down, awaiting my opening statement. Should I be scared? It felt like I should be scared.
“Let me think,” I said. “It’s been a minute.”
She gave a dramatic sigh. Had I said something? Did people frequently pretend to her they were experts on Polish history but then didn’t know their King Sigismund from their Lech Wałesa? Who pretends to know things about Poland?
“Let’s see now,” I began nervously. “The country was founded by Mieszko I, the Duke of Poland.”
“Every Polish school child knows this,” she said, picking a grape from a bowl next to the cheese board and examining it as if it were far more interesting than me.
“All right,” I said. “I know that his son Bolesław the Brave became the country’s first king.”
Looking at Polina, I saw only an impatient, expectant glare, as if to say And? What else? This only increased my panic.
“King Kasimir III reformed the army, judicial systems, and education in the fourteenth century,” I tried. Still not the slightest glimmer of approval.
“All right then. The Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania was formed in 1568-”
“It was 1569!” said Polina, as if she had caught me slipping cyanide into her grandmother’s tea. How had this gone so wrong? This was a disaster, a terrible disaster, like... like... like Polish history disastrous. Yes, that bad.
“1569!” I repeated in fear. “Erm... Jan Sobieski and his army staved off the destruction of Western Christendom at the Siege of Vienna in 1683... Oh, and Poland was partitioned in 1795 by Russia, Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire, after the Battle of Praga.”
“And?” she said. “What else? What else? Or is that all you know?” The last she spat at me derisively.
--
At this point, I wish to make a statement: You know nothing about Polish history.
Not you, your parents, your dentist, or your music teacher. You know nothing. Your friends, your acquaintances, people you pass on the street. They know nothing about Polish history; meanwhile, I know next to nothing. Crucially, this is more than nothing.
All right, perhaps you know there was a pope who came from Poland. You might remember that Marie Curie was Polish from primary school and that she has two Nobel Prizes; equally likely is that you conflate her with Mariah Carey, who has five Grammys. (In revenge, Maria Curie contrived to never win a Grammy. God, she could be petty like that.) You probably also know that German invaded Poland in 1939.
What else you got? I’ll tell you: Nothing. You have absolutely nothing. I know more than you about Polish history. That is all I want to say about this. I’m just leaving this here for people to chew over.
--
Was she subjecting everyone at this party to the same inquisition? I wondered. I pushed on, knowing my stock of these nuggets was being depleted rapidly. Nothing seemed to impress my inquisitor.
“During the Napoleonic era, a Polish army was raised to fight for the French against their common enemy, Russia. The army was led by Prince Josef Poniatowski.”
If not actively interested at this point, Polina was at least interested-adjacent. She cupped her chin in her hand. I would impress her, I told myself. I would thaw her heart. I could turn this around. I could make her fall in love with me, this random, beautiful, and now frightening woman. We would get serious (she was an insurance adjuster for a corporate insurance firm in the City so arguably she was already serious). Yes, I can do this, I thought, we will live together, and we’ll have two – no, three children: two girls, Aphrodite and Josephina, who will look like Polina, and a son, Maximillian, who will favour me and-
“So?” Polina demanded. I realized that I had drifted off imagining this bountiful future together. I had missed her follow-up question.
“Could you repeat that please?” With a pinched facial expression, I hoped to signal the loud music was why I hadn’t heard her question.
She sighed bitterly. “I asked, What happened to him?”
“To Poniatowski? Napoleon made him a Marshal of the Empire, in the field, at the Battle of the Nations in 1813. But alas, he was to be the shortest serving Marshal in French history, dying in the retreat two days later. He drowned in the Elster.”
“I bet you don’t know his last words,” said Polina, dismissively.
Strangely, I did. “They were ‘Poland..! Honour..!’.”
Polina looked frustrated. This was not how she had thought this conversation would go. She narrowed her eyes, and I could tell she was winding up to something big. The music of the party pounded in the next room as I waited.
She asked, “Tell me: who was the last king of Poland?”
Relief: I was still in familiar, snow covered, war-ravaged territory. I will impress her now, I thought.
Ah yes, but how innocent, how foolish was I. The nascent democratic Republic of Poland, finally independent, in 1918: that was me. I stood there, believing all my troubles were behind me, when the storm had only just begun. I was confident. I was bold. I was deluded.
“King Stanislas.”
This answer – which, by the way, is the correct one – just served to increase her displeasure.
“Yes – but Stanisław what?” she snapped, making sure to underscore the correct pronunciation.
I was thrown. Stanisław, but did he have some other name I had never known? It felt like if I got this wrong, I could wave it all farewell. There would be no midnight fumble in the garden, no “Your place or mine”, no sweaty, drunken sex. Little Maxie, Jo-Jo and Aphrodite could wave goodbye to their very existence.
But wait, worry not my pre-embryonic offspring! Everything would be all right, for I knew the answer. It was easy. It was obvious. Stanisław was the uncle of the aforementioned Josef, Marshal of the French Empire. They shared a surname!
“Stanisław Poniatowski!” I declared as if laying down a royal flush in a poker game.
“No, not his surname! What was he called? Stanisław what?”
Again, after a momentary panic, I understood what was required. Now I was in the home strait, now was my hour, now I could claim my beautiful bride.
“Stanisław,” I said in weary triumph, “the Second.”
I was not prepared for the anger Polina now ejaculated at me. It worried me that we were standing so close to the food table, for she might now take the cheese knife from the roundel of Camembert and stab me repeatedly in the throat, until I gurgled my final words through the bubbling vent she had just created in my neck. These would not have been “Poland” or “Honour.” They would have been, “What the actual fuck, Polina?”
“No!” she yelled. “His name was Stanisław II Augustus!”
She looked me up and down in disgust and said - get this - she actually said:
“I was right: you know nothing about Polish history!”
With this, she signalled the conversation was over, not by storming out of the room, but by moving approximately 18 inches further away, pouring herself another drink, and turning her back on me. I simply slunk away. I found Josh and had several drinks with him. I made my excuses after another two hours, thanked my host, and walked the mile or so home to my flat. I had blown it, all because I didn’t know that King Stanisław II’s supplemental honorific was Augustus. Was this fair? No. Did I know more about Polish history than anyone in that room apart from perhaps Polina? Yes.
--
This was the summer of 2001. Into September that year, we enjoyed charming weather, and London glowed with a pastoral sunshine which underlined our golden lives. There was always interesting work to complete, bonuses at end-of-year, a cappuccino on our desk, a gin and tonic awaiting us on the bar. Nothing could go wrong.
Until it did.
In the wake of the Aeroplanes flying into Buildings, everything collapsed. My employer’s clients were Rolls Royce and Marconi Wireless, both were balls-deep in the aviation industry. Bout after bout of lay-offs decimated the company. Josh took an offer in round one. A month or so later, an inept HR representative explained that while barred from trying to actively persuade me, she had in her pocket a cheque for £14,000, which I could take immediately if I volunteered to be laid off.
“The thing is, if you stay,” she explained, “you will have no work whatsoever to do.”
Obviously, I stayed, earned another year’s salary, and then took the cheque for £14,000. Because lazy isn’t the same as stupid.
My colleagues from that era had scattered to the four corners by the time I was laid off. We were bonded by mere coincidence, not destiny. I never saw any of them again, with one exception. Around three years later, I was Christmas shopping on an overcrowded Regent Street when I bumped into Josh, looking in the window of Liberty’s department store. We talked for a moment about current jobs, the old days, and future plans. Then he mentioned his current domestic situation.
“I’m living with this woman,” said Josh. “Perhaps you met her at my party? Her name’s Polina. She’s Polish.”
“Polina?” I turned it over in my mind for a moment before deciding the correct course. “No,” I said. “I don’t believe I did.”
“That’s funny,” he said. “She seemed to remember meeting you.”
I smiled. “Oh, you know me,” I said. “Never very good at remembering historical events.”
He and I promised we would text each other and go for a drink. As we parted - him heading south to Piccadilly, me north to Oxford Circus - I called after him and he turned back to me.
“Do you happen to know who the last king of Poland was?” I asked.
“The last king of Poland?” He looked completely puzzled at this question. “Not the faintest idea.”
So I laughed, and turned away, pushing through the ever-thickening throng.
