The Translation

Photo by Behnam Mohsenzadeh on Unsplash

My mother-in-law speaks a language no one understands. It’s not Italian and it’s not dialect.

She’s been speaking it for three years, ever since her stroke, and my wife insists we pretend it’s normal Italian, just badly pronounced.

“Smile,” she tells me. “Nod. She likes to think we understand.”

But we don’t understand.

She lives with us now, in the box room that used to be my office space. She sits in the chair by the window all day, speaking her incomprehensible language to no one, or to something we can’t see.

At first, I thought it was aphasia. Damage to the language centres, words scrambled, meaning lost — the usual signs following brain damage.

But the doctors said her brain scans were normal. Said there was no medical reason for the sounds she made.

“Perhaps it’s psychological,” one suggested delicately. “Trauma. Grief. A form of retreat from communication.”

But she’s not retreating. She’s communicating constantly, urgently, as if she has vital information that we’re too stupid to grasp.

“Kalasha morento vis,” she’ll say, grabbing my wrist. “Kalasha, kalasha! Vis morento kren!”

I smile and nod. I bring her tea.

My wife, Marisa, refuses to acknowledge there’s a problem. When her mother speaks, she responds in regular Italian as if she’d asked a normal question.

“Yes, Mamma. The weather is nice.”

“Of course, Mamma. We’ll visit the cemetery soon.”

“No, Mamma. We haven’t seen Aunt Vera.”

But she hasn’t asked about any of these things. I know she hasn’t. Because I’ve started writing down what she says, trying to find patterns, repetitions, anything that might be a key.

Kalasha — she says this often. Always with pointing, always urgent.

Morento — this one comes with tears, with clutching at her chest.

Vis kren talasha — this she says at night, when she thinks we’re asleep, rocking herself, keeping herself company with sounds that mean something to her.

I mentioned my notes to Marisa.

“Stop it,” she said. “You’re making her worse. She’s just confused. Sick. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“But what if it does?”

“It doesn’t.”

She won’t discuss it further.

But I kept writing. Filling notebooks with her incomprehensible sentences. Until I started to notice something. Certain words appear before certain events.

Two days before the pipes burst, she said, “Vrensha talak” seventeen times.

The morning the neighbour died, she woke up whispering, “Morento, morento, kren kren kren.”

Before Marisa lost her job, she spent three days repeating, “Kalasha vis! Maxisa kalasha!”

Maxisa. Close to Marisa. Was she saying her name? Trying to warn us?

I started responding to her. Not in Italian. In her language. Copying the sounds, the rhythms, trying to match her urgency.

She looked at me with such hope. Such desperate gratitude.

“Yes!” she said — wirh the word she used for yes, a sharp exhale and a nod. “Yes, yes! Talasha kren morento!”

Marisa caught us. Found me sitting with her mother, both of us speaking the incomprehensible language, having what looked like a conversation.

“What are you doing?” She demanded. Her face was livid with rage.

“Trying to understand her.”

“She’s sick. You’re encouraging her delusions.”

“What if she’s trying to tell us something?”

“Tell us what? In a made-up language? Listen to yourself, Davide.”

But I didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Because her mother was teaching me. Patiently, desperately, pointing at objects, saying words, waiting for me to repeat them.

Table: “Kren.”

Water: “Vrensha.”

Death: “Morento.”

Danger: “.Kalasha.”

Soon: “Vis.”

The vocabulary grew. I filled three notebooks. Started understanding maybe a quarter of what she said. Started responding, asking questions in her language, getting answers that made a terrible kind of sense.

“Kalasha vis morento,” she told me one morning, gripping my hand.

Danger soon death.

“Who?” I asked in her language — “Kral?”

She pointed at Marisa’s door. “Maxisa.”

I considered telling her. I considered warning Marisa that her mother, in her incomprehensible language, was predicting her death. But she wouldn’t have listened. She would’ve said I was mad, that we were both mad, that I was making everything worse.

So I watched and waited. Tried to prevent whatever was coming.

I threw out the old medicine in the bathroom — maybe she’d take the wrong pills. I unplugged electrical appliances — maybe she’d be electrocuted. I checked the car’s brakes — maybe they’d fail.

Nothing happened.

Marisa stayed healthy. Went to work at her new job. Came home. Ate dinner. Went to bed.

But her mother kept saying it: “Kalasha vis morento Maxisa.”

Until I realised: she wasn’t warning me.

She was instructing me.

The language wasn’t gibberish. It was a set of instructions. And the more I learned it, the more I was bound to follow it.

“No,” I told her. “I won’t.”

She looked at me with those clever eyes. “Talasha kren,” she said. Already done.

She was right: I’d been following the script all along. Every word I learned, every phrase I repeated, was binding me tighter to whatever narrative she’d written in this language no one else could speak.

Last night, I woke up standing over Marisa’s bed, holding a pillow. I had no memory of getting up, of walking to her room or picking up the pillow.

But my hands knew what to do. The language knew.

I dropped the pillow. Ran to my bedroom. Locked the door.

Her mother was shouting from the box room.

“Talasha kren morento vis! Talasha kren!”

Already done death soon. Already done.

“I didn’t do it,” I whispered.

“Talasha,” she insisted. Already.

This morning, Marisa is dead. Heart attack in her sleep. The doctor said it was quick, painless and unexpected. These things happen.

Her mother nodded when they told her. Said something in her language that might have been grief or might have been satisfaction. The doctor smiled sympathetically, patted her hand, assumed she was too confused to understand.

But I understood.

“Talasha kren,” she said to me, after they’d taken Marisa’s body. Already done.

And then: “Morento vis Darvixe.”

Death soon Davide.

I could refuse. Could stop learning the language and stop responding. I could simply stop following the script she’s written for us.

But I’ve come too far. Learned too much. The language is in me now, restructuring my thoughts and my future actions.

Tonight, I’ll stand over my own bed with a pillow.

Tonight, my hands will know what to do.

Because that’s what the language demands. That’s what it’s always demanded.

First Marisa.

Then me.

Then whoever moves into this flat to care for the old woman who speaks a language no one understands.

They’ll smile. They’ll nod.

They’ll pretend it’s normal Italian, badly pronounced.

And slowly, patiently, desperately, she’ll teach them.

Word by word.

Action by action.

Until they understand.

Until it’s already done.

Talasha kren.

Already done.

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