ARSAW — Jarosław Kaczyński’s office is located on the first floor of a ramshackle building in central Warsaw. There’s a pool hall in the basement and a Japanese restaurant around the corner. The simple sign on the glass door reads only, “The office of member of parliament Jarosław Kaczyński.” Everyone knows not to knock without prior permission. The room beyond is the heart of political power in Poland.

Despite his unprepossessing title, Kaczyński is much more than a simple MP. He’s the founder and undisputed leader of the Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (known by its Polish initials as PiS), overshadowing Prime Minister Beata Szydło and President Andrzej Duda — both of whom were chosen by him to run for their jobs.

Most mornings, Kaczyński arrives at work at about 10 in the morning, driven by his security detail (he has no driver’s license), and makes his way into the building via a rear entrance, according to Michał Krzymowski's 2015 book, “Kaczyński’s Secrets.” He doesn’t go out for lunch. He prefers traditional Polish food bought from a nearby canteen by his secretary. He almost always eats alone.

A typical day is spent in his airless and Spartan bureau, seated behind a heavy dark desk, receiving petitioners, callers and political allies. “There’s a line of ministers and deputy prime ministers waiting to see him,” says a close political ally who asked not to be identified, for fear of displeasing Kaczyński. “He listens to them all and in the end he makes a decision.” Those decisions are final.

Poland has seen similar figures before. Józef Piłsudski, the bewhiskered revolutionary who led Poland to independence in 1918, refused top public offices, preferring to run the country from behind the scenes. His portrait decorates Kaczyński’s office. And during Communist times, the real ruler was the party’s first secretary, not the prime minister.

But Kaczyński’s control of a country he doesn’t formally rule is unusual in modern Europe. Asked whether Kaczyński’s clearly expressed views on revamping the EU after the U.K. referendum were official policy, a senior Polish official in Brussels does a careful diplomatic dance. “His voice is one of the decisive ones,” he says.

Kaczyński speaks no foreign language, owns no computer, and only opened his first bank account in 2009. He has two cats and no spouse.

That ambiguity creates headaches for the government and confusion for Poland’s partners and allies, who formally have to meet with government officials they know do not make the final call on Polish policy — whether on EU reform after the Brexit vote, or on its relationship with NATO in light of the rising threat from Russia.

Kaczyński has received few foreign leaders. His most recent high profile meeting was in January with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, an ideological ally on the political right, with whom he shares a freely expressed distaste for liberal pieties, above all if pushed by Brussels, and a hard line on migration and firm defense of national sovereignty. During this weekend’s NATO summit in Warsaw, the most important decision maker in the host country will not have a formal seat at the table.

n a country where most politicians are colorless and bland, Kaczyński is charismatic, a 67-year-old life-long bachelor with an uncanny knack for riling up a crowd. He infuriates about half the country and captivates the rest. Chants of “Jarosław save us” are common at his political rallies.

His old companions say he is a man with a sharp wit, a great memory, and a propensity to tell long and involved stories. “He’s very amusing,” says Roman Giertych, former leader of a right-wing party that had been in a coalition with PiS from 2005-2007 before helping bring down the short-lived government. “You can talk to him three or four hours at a time. The only limitation is that he’s only interested in Poland.”

Kaczyński has only taken one holiday outside of Poland, travelling with his mother and twin brother in the 1960s to visit cousins in Odessa in Ukraine. He speaks no foreign language, owns no computer, and only opened his first bank account in 2009.

Paweł Kowal, a former deputy foreign minister who helped lead Kaczyński's failed 2010 presidential campaign and then split with him, compares him to an old-fashioned country squire, cut off from everyday knowledge of the broader world. “He reads a lot of books and people come from the outside to tell him about the world. It’s a very 19th century way of working,” he says.

Boozy lunches over the Polish EB brand beer of the past are now a rarity. Most of his old companions and friends have become enemies. He is surrounded by favor-seekers and those submissive to his will.

Kaczyński did not always work alone. In the 1980s, he climbed the ranks of Poland’s Solidarity movement with his identical twin brother, Lech. Both men were also close with their mother, Jadwiga, who raised them in an atmosphere of patriotism and piety, with heavy doses of suspicion toward Germany and Russia.

“He’s completely uninterested in money and women. One thing interests him and that’s power.”

Of the two brothers, Jarosław was the tougher one, the leader. Lech was softer, more genial. He played the more important role in dissident politics, spending almost a year in internment after the communist regime declared martial law in 1981. The two men would consult on every important decision, calling each other more than a dozen times a day.

After the fall of Communism, both brothers enjoyed a fast rise followed by a period of political marginalization. In 2001 they founded the party that Jarosław still leads today. In 2005, Jarosław turned down the role as prime minister, after his party won the election, to leave room for his brother’s successful run for president. The next year, after a split in the party, Lech appointed Jarosław prime minister, an office he held for a year and a half.

In April 2010, Lech was on a way to a memorial to Polish victims of the 1940 Katyn massacre, when the presidential airliner crashed outside of Smolensk, Russia. All 96 people aboard, including Lech and his wife, were killed. Jarosław was shattered. Since Lech’s death, he has worn only black. “He’s very different now. I don’t really understand this new Kaczyński,” says Jadwiga Staniszkis, a political scientist and once a close friend and adviser who has since become a critic.

According to Krzymowski, Jarosław went to enormous lengths to protect his mother, who was ill at the time, from news of Lech’s death. He had dummy copies of a daily newspaper printed up with stories that Lech and his wife were slowly sailing across the Atlantic, unable to fly home because of the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

Jarosław could not hide the truth forever, and he still feels that Lech’s sudden loss lead to his mother’s death in 2013. While she was sick, he traveled to Częstochowa, Poland’s holiest shrine, and pledged to swear off alcohol if she got better. He now drinks only tea. “I’m simply very sad,” he said in an interview after his mother’s death. “Something that was very important and precious ended and it won’t return.”

The other day, a knock at the door of Kaczyński's cement-colored square duplex in Warsaw Żoliborz neighborhood, wreathed by overgrown trees and vines, produces silence. Next door a bald and heavily-muscled man in a green military-style uniform says the party boss isn't available to talk. His office doesn't respond to requests for an interview for this article.

ost nights, according to a recent interview with the Polish tabloid Super Express, long after almost everyone in the Polish capital is fast asleep, Kaczyński stays up late at home, watching television with his two cats.

His favorite thing to watch, he told an interviewer at the tabloid, are rodeos: “I only go to sleep around three. I can’t earlier. That’s when I look with amazement at people riding bulls. That’s a really enormous skill to be able to hang on for a few seconds onto a bucking beast.”

It’s an interest that lends itself to analogy, given his dominance of the political arena. Kaczyński exerts his power through his forceful personality and absolute control of his party. He chooses each of the party's candidates for the Polish and the European Parliaments. His nod is needed for the purges that are now sweeping through Polish embassies, government ministries, media and state-controlled corporations, as hundreds of workers are fired and replaced with PiS supporters.

“He’s completely uninterested in money and women,” says Giertych. “He has one thing that interests him and that’s power. There are sexaholics and alcoholics, but he’s a poweraholic.”

In last year’s presidential election, Kaczyński plucked Duda from the backbenches of the European Parliament to stand as a candidate, and by all accounts continues to dictate his decisions. Duda “looks scared,” says a fellow European leader who has met with the Polish president. Szydło was also chosen by Kaczyński to head the Polish government. It's unlikely she would survive long if she fell from his favor.

Kaczyński is said to revel in gossip about his underlings, and often humiliates them in public. Zbigniew Ziobro, now the powerful justice minister and chief prosecutor, was treated like a naughty boy when he showed up late for a meeting during the party’s previous 2005-2007 stint in power, says a former PiS official.

Those close to Kaczyński say that he expects obsequious behavior from his underlings, especially men. Those who keep their hands in their pockets are seen as disrespectful. One minister was chastised for walking with too confident a gait.

In Brussels, Ryszard Czarnecki, a PiS MEP and vice-president of the European Parliament, launches into a description of Kaczyński’s merits. “He’s very interesting intellectually,” he says. “He’s got a lot of knowledge about Europe even though he’s not a globetrotter. It’s not just Poland; it’s Europe and the world. For example, he knows a lot more about Africa than I do.”

Suddenly, his secretary pokes her head in the office. “Chairman Kaczyński is calling,” she announces. Czarnecki leaps from his chair, grabs a notepad from his desk, and hurries to the next room to take the call.

In late June, Kaczyński was re-elected as his party’s leader (a post he’s held since 2003) with the support of 1,008 delegates. Seven were opposed and one abstained “That result, with seven against, shows that we do have some sort of a democracy here,” Kaczyński joked after the vote.

In a speech that did not spare senior government officials from criticism, Kaczyński laid out his vision for an overhaul of his country. He has long been suspicious of the 1989 transformation that followed the end of Communist rule, and has argued that it was deeply flawed, allowing communist apparatchiks, criminals and corrupt Solidarity activists to enrich themselves and consolidate control of the country.

Like Orbán in Hungary, Kaczyński is suspected by many of his opponents of seeking to elevate a new rank of elites, through the creation of an economy with heavy state control. During his speech, he denounced Leszek Balcerowicz, the liberal economist whose 1989 shock therapy is widely credited for Poland’s post-Communist economic rise, and announced a program aimed at creating a “new redistribution of wealth.” And then, after thanking the delegates for his nearly unanimous election as party leader, he concluded: “I see this result as a vote of confidence, but also an authorization to be the real, true leader of this great movement of change.”