Eduard burst into laughter again, so loudly that even the windows vibrated.
“Perfect!” he said, in the voice of an actor in a bad play. “Maybe you should enter the contest too. Who knows, maybe the cleaning lady will decipher what five PhDs cannot!”
Everyone smiled awkwardly, some out of fear, others out of shame. Rosa, however, remained silent. She looked at the yellowed paper that Eduard was waving arrogantly and felt a strange shiver.
“Sir…” she said softly. “Can I take a look at it?”
The office erupted in laughter. “Sure, Rosa! Here you go! Maybe you’ll find the recipe for tripe soup in there!” Eduard said, handing her the paper.
The woman took the document with trembling hands. Her gaze crossed for a moment, then cleared. The strange letters on the paper seemed to arrange themselves into familiar words.
She looked closer.
One symbol, then another. And suddenly… she recognized something.
“This… this is neither Arabic nor Chinese…” she murmured. “It’s an old form of Romanian, sir.”
Silence fell over the room.
Eduard raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, old Romanian? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous, sir. Look here, these letters… they resemble the Cyrillic script from the 1800s. And this symbol… I know it from my grandfather. He had a notebook with prayers written like this.”
The translators approached curiously, looking at each other. Dr. Petrescu took the paper from Rosa’s hands and blinked in astonishment. “Incredible… the woman is right. Some words are indeed of old Romanian origin, mixed with Church Slavonic!”
Eduard suddenly lost his smile. “What nonsense is this… it can’t be.”
Rosa, however, continued calmly: “It says here… that money and wealth cannot buy the peace of the soul… and that only he who knows how to humble himself will be forgiven.”
Eduard stood up abruptly, trying to snatch the paper from her hand, but Rosa held it tightly.
His gaze, once cold and confident, became troubled.
“Who told you to say that?” he shouted.
“No one, sir. I just read what it says.”
One of the translators, Dr. Marinescu, intervened: “Mr. Stan, this document… it seems like a family letter. Perhaps even from an ancestor. It might be your family’s moral testament.”
Eduard collapsed into a chair. It seemed as if the air had been sucked out of his chest.
In his mind, Rosa’s words echoed, repeated by an unseen voice: “Only he who knows how to humble himself…”
For the first time in his life, Eduard was no longer laughing.
His gaze lost itself in the huge window, where, beyond the skyscrapers, the people below lived their simple lives, running after buses, laughing, crying, living.
A tear rolled down his smooth, cold cheek.
Rosa left the paper on the desk and took a step back.
“With your permission, sir, I would like to finish what I started on the 46th floor.”
Eduard said nothing. He just nodded.
When the door closed behind her, the office that once brimmed with arrogance suddenly felt empty.
The translators left quietly, without asking for their payment.
A few days later, the press headlined:
“Magnate Eduard Stan donates half of his fortune for rural schools and hospitals.”
No one knew exactly what had happened that day on the 47th floor.
But Rosa, the cleaning lady, found an envelope in her closet with a simple note:
“Because you translated what all the money in the world could not.”
Inside was 500,000 lei and a short letter:
“Thank you for showing me what it truly means to be human.”
This work is inspired by real events and people, but has been fictionalized for creative purposes. Names, characters, and details have been changed to protect privacy and enhance the narrative. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to real events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
The author and publisher do not assume responsibility for the accuracy of events or for the way characters are portrayed and are not liable for any misinterpretations. This story is provided “as is,” and any opinions expressed belong to the characters and do not reflect the views of the author or publisher.
