The Last Man in the Phone Book

The phone book still exists. That is the first thing everyone gets wrong.

It is much thinner. The business section is about forty pages and the residential section, for a district of a hundred and sixty thousand people, is one entry.

ZAWADZKI A, 14 Melbury Rd — 01xxx 4xx xxx

Why

Andrzej Zawadzki is eighty-six and has never opted out, because opting out requires action and he has taken the view since about 1998 that he is not going to take action about something he did not ask for.

Everyone else opted out, or went mobile, or was defaulted out when the opt-in rules changed in 2015. Andrzej was already in and stayed in, and each year the book got thinner around him, and in 2021 he became the only one.

He did not notice until a journalist told him.

The calls

He gets about eleven a year.

Four of them are people who have found the book in a drawer and rung the number to see whether it works. These are almost always young. They are usually extremely apologetic. Andrzej has learned to say "it works" before they finish, which stops the apology and which they find funny.

Two or three are wrong numbers of the ordinary kind.

One or two are scams, which he enjoys, and which he strings along for as long as he can manage, and about which he keeps a small tally on the pad by the telephone. His record is fourteen minutes.

And then there are the others.

The others

The first was in 2019, before the book got down to one, from a woman in Preston who said she was sorry and that she had picked a name at random and that she was going to hang up.

Andrzej said, "Why did you ring?"

She talked for forty minutes.

He has never told anybody what about, including his daughter, who knows the call happened because she was in the house.

Since 2021, when he became the only entry, there have been eleven more.

They come at night, mostly. They begin the same way — a pause, and then some version of sorry, I don't know why I've— — and Andrzej has developed, without deciding to, a way of answering that pause.

He says: "You have the right number."

On what he thinks is going on

His daughter has a theory involving loneliness and the internet.

Andrzej's theory is simpler and he has stated it once, to a local reporter, in a sentence the reporter did not use because it did not fit the tone of the piece.

He said: "If you want to speak to a stranger you have to find one. There is a book of them. There used to be a lot of us in it."

The 2024 edition

It came in October, as it does, wrapped in plastic on the step.

He is still the only one.

He has three previous editions in the sideboard and he keeps them for no reason he can defend.

The offer

In August the directory company wrote to him.

The letter was polite and slightly odd and explained that the residential directory would cease publication after the 2025 edition, and that the company wished to "acknowledge his long-standing inclusion," and offered him a framed copy of the page.

The page is mostly white.

Andrzej wrote back and asked instead whether they would keep the number listed online after the book stopped.

They wrote back and said the online directory was also closing.

What he did

He rang his daughter and asked her how much it would cost to put an advertisement in the local paper.

She asked what for.

He said he wanted it to say his name, and his telephone number, and nothing else.

She said, "Dad. That's — do you know what that is? People will ring you."

"Yes," said Andrzej.

There was a pause on the line.

"Every week?" she said.

"I hope so," he said.

It ran in November. Eleven words including the number.

He has had nine calls since. Two were about a sofa, and one was a scam, and one was a man of about thirty who did not say anything at all for eleven seconds.

Andrzej waited.

Then he said, "You have the right number," and put the kettle on with his other hand, which he has got very good at.