A daughter chronicles her father’s story as one of the last Warmians in this deftly woven memoir and essay
Warmijo
Auf! Sprach der Fuchs zum Hasen.
Hörst du? Die Trompetten blasen.
This is the rhyme with which my father greets me in the morning, if he’s up first.
Behold the king in his kingdom. He presides over the throne room (no throne jokes, please!), from a grey armchair with a high back at a table made with his own hands from Warmian oak. A faithful fan heater pants at his feet; there are draughts in the castle tower. Maps of the kingdom on the walls all around, so as to avoid any doubt. Heilsberg, Frauenburg, Wormditt, Mehlsack, Braunsberg and many other towns, including the most important – and also the current capital – Allenstein. Olsztyn, an old barracks town, or Kasernopolis, as some even say. One of the maps declares in French that it depicts La Prusse Royale et Ducale, Royal and Ducal Prussia, and dates from 1805. Another identifies itself in Latin: Tabula geographica episcopatum Warmiensem in Prussia. The third and oldest, from the mid-16th century, presents a Prussia positioned on its side, as it were, as though reclining on a chaise longue with the Baltic not above, but to its left. The maps are not originals, of course, but there’s no point in faffing with originals when one owns everything on them. On the table, which could easily accommodate a substantial model battlefield, rests a sceptre – that is, the TV remote – along with all a ruler’s essential accessories: magnifying glass, blood-pressure gauge, narrow little knife, pens and a pillbox with medicines arranged, 11 tablets every day. Meanwhile, on the wall behind the king, almost at ceiling height, a shelf with a hundred ceramic steins commands respect.
‘Morgen!’ This, on the other hand, is the usual greeting if I am up first, as is more often the case.
The story is set on the 11th floor of a large-panel high-rise, built on a housing estate called Podgrodzie which sprang up on a hillside not far from Olsztyn’s Old Town in the 70s of the 20th century. The apartment has windows facing in two directions of the world; a double and truly royal view extends before them, with absolutely spectacular pageants featuring the sun’s risings and settings, spectacles presumably prepared especially for the ruler. Migratory kestrels perch on the sills; clouds, helicopters and gliders float beyond the windows. With good long-distance vision, one can even see flying Zeppelins.
‘Do not whistle at the hearth – you’ll whistle up the devil’s arse.’ The monarch’s in a good mood today. ‘Tak sia móziło u noju – that’s what we used to say,’ he tells me with a smile.
No one mocks the ruler here – he’s a serious, truly royal king, whom nurses at the surgery fear, whose majesty everyone immediately recognises, automatically maintaining an appropriate distance towards the capricious patriarch who does not account for his whims. His arrival is often accompanied by the nervous whispers of his relatives: ‘He’s coming, he’s coming!’ followed by the complicated choreography of shifting aside, relinquishing a spot and indicating a suitable seat. Observing this courtly dance which starts up of its own accord, as if mechanically, really is fascinating. But it’s only one proof of the individual’s uniqueness.
My father is neither a Pole nor a German. He is a Warmian.
This is important. A mistake could mean the loss of your head. My father’s sense of pride is matched only by his sense of injustice. That is why he treads slowly, carefully. He bears a heavy load. The crown.
The introduction to a Warmian tale, at the very least the introduction, really demands the use of feudal language. This is a retro story, it unfolds on the set of a bygone world, with its hierarchy and pathos. Its sentences should stand to attention, stiff and starched, since they concern things of such importance to my father, like history and, above all, himself. But let us not forget that the king can also give a wink, can be the local bon vivant, when he mingles with the people.
What do they speak here? What’s the local language? Here, in this apartment on the 11th floor of a large-panel high-rise block, straight out of Gierek’s dreams? It varies, as always in Warmia.
Translated by Anna Zaranko
A daughter chronicles her father’s story as one of the last Warmians in this deftly woven memoir and essay
Translation rights: Zofia Dimitrijević, zofia.dimitrijevic@czarne.com.pl
From the 11th floor of an Olsztyn tower block, the author’s elderly father – the eponymous king – surveys his kingdom. Through the eyes of his daughter, a forgotten history is pieced together: the history of the Warmians. This small group with long roots in northern Poland was practically obliterated by the Second World War, while those who did not leave for Germany were suppressed by the new communist regime. But their story survives with the author, one of the 148 people who declared themselves Warmians in Poland’s last general census.
In this part essay, part memoir, part eulogy, Joanna Wilengowska assembles fragmentary snatches of her father’s memories and daily life; a life that is inhabited by ghosts of the past and visited by the memory of atrocities, with stories resurrected sometimes through a single Warmian phrase. The Polish text is intertwined with German and Warmian in this multilayered and evocative account. The past mixes with the present. Tragedy rubs shoulders with comedy. With a distinctive flair, combining tenderness, humour and irony, we follow the author’s journey through her father’s identity and her own, creating a dialogue between all histories that have been left unsaid, deaths left unlamented, truths hidden, crimes untold, and graves lost.
Throughout it all, the engaging and colourful figure of the father presides over this family memoir, surveying the remnants of his kingdom. The King of Warmia and Saturn will appeal to the reader drawn to universal questions about exclusion and appropriation, identity and belonging, and how the past continues to seep into the present.
Anna Zaranko
Selected samples
She climbed her first peaks in a headscarf at a time when women in the mountains were treated by climbers as an additional backpack. It was with her that female alpinism began! She gained recognition in a spectacular way. The path was considered a crossing for madmen. Especially since the tragic accident in 1929, preserved … Continue reading “Halina”
First, Marysia, a student of an exclusive private school in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, dies under the wheels of a train. Her teacher, Elżbieta, tries to find out what really happened. She starts a private investigation only soon to perish herself. But her body disappears, and the only people who have seen anything are Gniewomir, a … Continue reading “Wound”
A young girl, Regina Wieczorek, was found dead on the beach. She was nineteen years old and had no enemies. Fortunately, the culprit was quickly found. At least, that’s what the militia think. Meanwhile, one day in November, Jan Kowalski appears at the police station. He claims to have killed not only Regina but also … Continue reading “Penance”
The year is 1922. A dangerous time of breakthrough. In the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bolshevik gangs sow terror, leaving behind the corpses of men and disgraced women. A ruthless secret intelligence race takes place between the Lviv-Warsaw-Free City of Gdańsk line. Lviv investigator Edward Popielski, called Łysy (“Hairless”), receives an offer … Continue reading “A Girl with Four Fingers”
This question is closely related to the next one, namely: if any goal exists, does life lead us to that goal in an orderly manner? In other words, is everything that happens to us just a set of chaotic events that, combined together, do not form a whole? To understand how the concept of providence … Continue reading “Order and Love”
The work of Józef Łobodowski (1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – is slowly being revived in Poland. Łobodowski’s brilliant three- volume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and … Continue reading “Ukrainian Trilogy: Thickets, The Settlement, The Way Back”
