Free Translator by Nina Schuyler Page B

she’ll be right back.
    Hanne feels a crackle of excitement. She stretches her lips over her front teeth, opens her mouth wide, runs her tongue along the soft inside of her cheeks. Be quiet. Please be quiet. Her mouth muscles feel like a new toy.
    By the time the doctor arrives, she’s carefully formed her speech, but can only manage a short sentence: Time for me to go home. The concentration required for that one, coherent sentence has worn her out. If granted more energy, she’d say “Thank you for such thoughtful care. I can’t remember when I’ve been so well attended to, but it’s time to resume my life. After nine days here, this place is beginning to sap my soul.” “Sap my soul” is her sole utterance.
    He nods, staring at her more intently than he ever has, his eyes alight, alert, and says he’ll be right back. He returns with the copper-haired doctor and a timid-looking Japanese woman with bony arms. The doctor introduces her as Keiko Matsuko. She is doing her residency in neurosurgery.
    â€œPlease tell her what you just told me,” says the doctor.
    Hanne repeats her statement slowly. The Japanese woman translates.
    â€œFascinating,” he says, smiling, looking at Hanne as if she’s a glorious star. “You’re speaking Japanese.”
    She is doing well. Walking now, urinating, bathing on her own. Everything seems to have returned, except her ability to speak her first languages. Though she can hear them in her head, sense the texture of the words in English, Dutch, German, she can almost feel the English word in the front part of her brain travel over a bridge to Japanese, a language she learned in her teens.
    It seems that a second language learned in adulthood, says the doctor, is spatially separated in the brain from the native language, or in Hanne’s case, the languages of English and German and Dutch. Both are located in the brain’s language area, the Broca, but they are not in the same spot.
    Tomas stands beside Hanne’s bed, and the doctor’s eyes flit from Hanne to Tomas, as if not certain to whom he should speak. The doctor had done some research and found a similar case in Israel involving a 41-year-old bilingual man. His mother tongue was Arabic, and he learned Hebrew later in life. A brain injury knocked out both languages, but rehabilitation eventually brought back his Arabic. His Hebrew, however, remained severely damaged. He could understand it, but not speak it proficiently.
    â€œHe represents the typical case—the mother tongue is recovered first. But you, you’ve retained the language learned later in life. That’s unusual. There’ve been some cases where the later language returned first if it was used the most around the time of the accident. Is that true of your Japanese?”
    Hanne shakes her head no. Despite the year-long effort to translate Kobayashi’s novel, Hanne’s primary language was always English. And even when her husband had been alive, English was their preferred language. For Hanne, Japanese has always been too quiet, too passive. With its verb at the end of the sentence and changing its form, depending on who one was speaking to, it made her too aware of what she was saying and to whom. When she spoke it, she could feel it shaping her private mental life into something more demure, indecisive, even wishy-washy. It would do no good to think this way, especially in dog-eat-dog America, where the winner takes all.
    â€œOr the later language is the most practical—”
    Again, Hanne shakes her head no.
    â€œAnother study suggests that the language first recovered might be motivated by unconscious factors. I’m speculating, of course, but maybe Japanese holds more significance for you. For some reason, in your subconscious, it’s more important or meaningful for you to speak it right now.”
    What’s most important right now is that she go home.