The Miracle Typist Author Leon Silver on Writing Someone Else’s Story

THE  EXPERIENCE  OF WRITING SOMEONE’S BIOGRAPHY –THE MIRACLE TYPIST

I have had two novels published, but when I started writing The Miracle Typist, I realised that to write a biography carried with it a huge responsibility.

This war memoir was told to me 35-40 years after it happened. I believe that memory, relaying these delayed messages after such a long time, rearranges them to fit a suitable jigsaw puzzle in the protagonist’s head. Tolek’s account of his six years of war fitted into this category. As Tolek passed these events on to me, it was as if he was fitting one piece after another into that 1000 piece puzzle in his head to form the full picture.

Tolek was a hoarder; he’d kept all of his original war documents, and even, for my benefit, had some translated from Polish by the Victorian Government Translation service. He would extract these from his pocket plus read to me from notes jotted down the night before.

We would both laugh, as like two facing off gunslingers, I would also whip out from my pocket prepared notes asking for details such as: what food did he eat during that six-year war campaign; what were the villages like in the African desert; what conversations did the soldiers have while resting from the battlefield… and many more.

When I wrote the first draft, Tolek got very emotional. Down on paper it was ‘official’; real. Tolek looked up at me and nodded slowly. ‘This story needs to be told,’ he whispered to himself and I took a deep breath as he touched my shoulder with thanks. I wanted to make sure that I conveyed it in the same honest way that it was handed down to me. Tolek told me it was above all a war of moral issues, and that The Miracle Typist had a much broader landscape than mere wartime memoir.

Tolek trusting me with this story, and me writing it, brought us closer together, it formed a bond between us that made me feel almost as though I had accompanied him throughout his six-year war campaign.

Having confided this intricate war biography to me, he became more than my father-in-law. He was now my mentor and friend. Tolek the man, as well as his story, needed to come alive. I hope I did justice to it.

*Tolek Klings passed away in 1996 at the age of eighty-five. We still miss him. I raise a glass of whisky in cheers to you, Tolek, and to quote crazy Eliezer: ‘Mazldik nshmh’. Lucky soul!