The Writing on the Wall

This is the third story in the "Stories from Under the Golden Roof" series. This story contains some dialogue in German and Serbian, translations of the German and Serbian dialogue is included. The German and Serbian dialogue has not been edited. Any errors are entirely the fault of the author.

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Chapter 1 - introduction

Wade turned up the volume on his laptop, when he heard the daily news jingle: "Und jetzt die aktuelle Nachrichten in einer Minute. (And now a one-minute news update)" The news announcer intoned. "A trade delegation from New Yugoslavia arrived today. Leaders of both countries hope to reach a new trade agreement on wine imports. Negotiations had stalled in recent weeks over disagreements on tariffs imposed by the Tyrolean government on imports of wine from Neusiedlersee over concerns of hazardous chemicals used in production. New Yugoslavian regulators retaliated by imposing tariffs on wine made from Gewürtztraminer citing concerns over the quality of safety of the alpine grape. Governments of both countries have accused the other of falsifying..."

A woman with a familiar coif of short, dark brown hair, specked with silver dropped a manila envelope onto his desk. "Wade, another rush job came in today and I need you to take the lead on this."

"Absolutely! I won't let you down!" Wade couldn't grab the envelope right next to him fast enough. This was his big chance, at last he'd be able to make more than just enough to live on and be able to show that he could lead a project! "What is the project? Who is it with?"

"You'll be meeting with the client shortly who will explain everything to you," Gabi explained upon seeing his blank stare at the forms he pulled from the folder. "I've also assigned Sanja Zoronjić to work on this. Oh, here she is now."

Wade's ears perked up at the mention of the other woman's name. His heart did a flip when the slim woman with long, dark brown hair walked over to his cubicle.

"Wade, this is Mrs. Zoronjić. Wade will be taking the lead on this project."

"Yes, we've worked together before," Sanja's lipped formed a tight line, which curled ever so slightly into a smile and turned her head away from him to brush a few stray strands of dark brown hair behind her ear.

"Who is the client?" Wade asked when thin woman she stared straight forward through her bangs not meeting his gaze.

"They asked that we keep that confidential for the moment. Don't talk about this assignment with anyone accept each other and myself. You'll have to sign this confidentiality agreement before speaking with the client."

"Why all the secrecy?" Wade bent over to try to read the fine print before giving up.

"Who is the client, someone from the central government?" Sanja grimaced before signing her copy.

"You'll find out when you meet him." Gabi placed both signed forms back into the envelope. "Come with me."

Walking down the hall, Wade watched Sanja out of the corner of his eye. He could smell her perfume. Where had she been all weekend? She'd disappeared on him at a bar Friday night and hadn't been answering his texts and calls.

Without a look behind her, Sanja walked through the door Gabi had opened. Over Sanja's shoulder, Wade saw a man with close-cropped blonde hair stand up and tug down on his blue blazer before walking over to them. "Guten Morgen, Herr Sprachwyn, mein Name ist Martin Scheubel. Frau Zoronik, (Good morning, Mr. Sprakwyn. My name is Martin Scheubel. Mrs. Zoronik)" Scheubel nodded curtly at Sanja.

"Herr Scheubel."

"Danke, Frau Stein." He took the manila folder from Gabi.

Gabi's eyebrows rose a centimeter or two before she recovered herself. "Dann, ich verabschiede mich. (Then, I will excuse myself)"

"Kommen Sie bitte hier her. Ich möchte euch etwas zeigen. (Come over here. I want to show you something.)"

Scheubel led them over a long table with several folders spread out on it. Wade enjoyed a quick peak down Sanja's black blouse, he could make out her thick nipples straining against her right undershirt when she bent over to pick up a folder. Her breasts had felt so good in his hands. Kneading them from behind, when she had let him slide a hand up her shirt at the bar Friday night. The comforting weight of her reclining against him. The feeling of her fingers running through his hair. Her moans only just audible over the bone-jarring beat as he twisted and pulled on her nipples...

Forcing himself to focus on the folders in front of him, Wade picked one up and saw that it was filled with pictures of various painted and carved wooden panels with various letters and symbols carved along the upper sections. Wade recognized some as Cyrillic. The designs seemed similar to the ones on the balcony from the ruins he had run into before.

"These," Scheubel snatched the folder from Wade from where he sat at the table, "were taken from our Goldenes Dachl. During the last war, the city archives, along with the original wood panels and the documentation on them were destroyed in the bombings." He fixed Wade with a pointed look for a split second before returning to the images. "Now no one knows what these words mean. They seem to be a jumble. We figure it must be Serbian, you can see the Serbian and Croatian coats of arms below that of the Hapsburgs. We need you to figure out what is written here."

"This is certainly an interesting project and we're happy to work with you on this, but why are you asking us to help?" Wade asked. "Surely there must be someone at the university with more knowledge of Slavic languages and history who would be better suited to help."

"All of the University's resources are currently being used on other projects. I'm sure Mrs. Zoronjić is more than capable of deciphering it."

Sanja gave him an icy stare before turning her gaze to the pictures on the table. Her arms crossed in front of her chest.

"It is important for our country that we restore our history and bring it back to life. As a lover of literature, I'm sure you'd agree that our past works help to shape who we are as a country today."

Wade shrugged. "I certainly don't disagree with that, I just find it hard to believe that all records of what was written on the wall were lost. Something must have been scanned onto a computer and uploaded to the internet at some point."

"Not everything has been scanned and digitalized. Especially if it was written before the 1980s. We are not like you Americans, who have to update to the latest fade constantly." Wade wanted to knock that smirk off Scheubel's face. "Some new articles on the Dachl or the emperor at the time might be in the university archives, but so far we haven't had time to search properly."

"Are these the pictures of the original panels?"

"No, unfortunately. The original panels along with their photographs were destroyed in the bombing. These are photos of the copies of the panels, which are on the Dachl now."

"A copy without an original," Wade mused to himself.

"What?"

"Nothing...We'll see what we can find out Herr Scheubel."

"Please work quickly." Scheubel smoothed out his pant legs and he stood up. "I expect this to be done by the end of the week."

"We won't let you down."

"I hope not. Auf wiedersehen. (Goodbye)"

"So 'n Ungustl, (What a jerk)" Sanja spat at Scheubel's retreated back.

Wade turned towards Sanja, it was the first time she'd said since seeing Scheubel. "Quite a project, huh?" Her lips were set in a grim line, arms crossed across her chest so tight he could almost make out her nipples underneath. She kept her gaze fixed on the wall in front of her. "So, I waited around for you Friday night. You never came back. What happened?"

"Something came up. I had to go. 'Schuldigung. (Sorry)" Sanja grumbled, her gaze fixed on the opposite wall.

"Without saying anything? I sent her a text after text ad never got a reply.",

"You mean that garbled mess?" Now that icy stare was directed at hi. "Were you drunk when you wrote that?"

Wade's cheeks redden. He had texted in German on his American phone, which only has auto-correct for English. When he checked the message he wrote walked home in the rain, he saw a mangled mass of German and English and fully incomprehensible. Wade's flustered explanation fell on deaf ears.

"Alright," Wade busied himself gathering the laid-out pictures and returning them to the folder. "I'll see if I can find anything information on the Goldenes Dachl through the university website. I can't believe in the digital age that everything was lost. Why don't you take a look at the letters from the pictures?"

She shook her head. "I haven't spoken Serbian since I was a kid."

"Well, I learned Serbian at the University, and we just wrote using Roman characters..."

"So did I. You'll be able to see if any words are there. You can do this yourself. Did you ask me to be on this project, because you know I speak Serbian?"

"What? I only found out about the project now. Gabi asked me to work on it right before she said we'd be working together." Silence. "Come on, Sanja. You're the only one here who speaks fluent Serbian. If anyone has a chance of figuring out what's written on here, it's you!"

"Wade, you don't get it! All my life growing up, I couldn't get past other kids' stupid comments about having parents from Serbia. Balkan this and Yugo that! I couldn't even escape it at the University. This is the first job, where no one raised an eyebrow when they hear my name. I'm not playing the Balkan expert anymore!"

"Sanja, I know you had a hard time growing up, but this is for a project..."

"No! I'm not doing it! I'll see what I can find about the people who built this, but that's it!" She slammed the door behind her as she left.

...

Wade scanned the pictures of all the panels spread out in front of him. A jumbled of strange and familiar letters. Some were covered by various flailing body parts of the celebratory dancers. The ones where the gold paint worn off were almost indistinguishable from the dark wooden panels.

Wade copied the inscriptions onto a blank piece of paper. Gazing down at his work, he thought back to the day in Serbian 101 when they learned the Cyrillic alphabet. What did the revers R represent? He could picture in his mind writing out "I like cats" in Serbian using Cyrillic characters, he traced the characters in the air as he whispered the words to himself. Oh, yes! Я equals "ya!" Ч, the inverse "h," was "ch," Like Sanja telling him to be quiet. И, the reversed N, was "ee."

About a quarter of the signs only came from the Cyrillic alphabet. Other were like the Roman characters but represented a different sound: "B," he remembered, was actually "V." "P" was an "R." It was like going in to a mirror universe or going in to Alice in Wonderland. Half were backwards when they shouldn't be, others were upside-down or otherwise totally messed up. Like a child who was just learning to spell, only with a steadier penmanship. It didn't help that some were covered up by the dancers' hands and heads.

The string of letters the page did not arrange itself into something meaningful before his eyes, which were starting to ack from the strain. Time for a coffee.

The whirl of the grinder stopped. The top came off with a click and a rich, nutty smell of the beans filled the air. One of Wades first purchases after Gabi gave him a permanent position was a coffee grinder. The stuff in the breakroom was OK, but he preferred fresh-ground beans. He poured the Sichuan coffee grounds into the new, rinsed-out paper filter and turned on the machine.

As the coffee brewed, Wade browsed the bookcase and found a Serbian-German dictionary.

He added some ice cubes to his mug and poured the coffee over the ice, With the acids released from the cold and hot water you could almost do without creamer, though he almost always added some anyway. Wade took a sip, the nutty taste and smell seeped into him, ameliorating all the stress of the day, he could imagine himself in his happy place in his sofa, listening to the pouring rain outside. He could almost taste the hints of apple and caramel the barista at the tasting had promised him. Almost, if he put in some effort. He added a dash of creamer. To smooth the taste out, he told himself.

"Let's try putting the letters in order, see if they mean anything together," Once more at his desk, coffee mug in hand. He opened the dictionary to the first character in the list. Was there word that continued with the next character in the string? "No, they don't spell anything put together." A few strings seemed to float to the surface of meaning only to dsolve and sink down at the next sign. It was bad enough that he didn't recognize many of the characters, he couldn't even remember the order of the Cyrillic alphabet without looking at the front of the dictionary. Maybe they were conjugated weird or in a case that he wasn't familiar with. "Is it possible that some are missing?" He tried replacing any that were covered by a flailing appendage with the extra stroke. Yes, this Ц might be an Ш. That brought up a result: Школе - school, though one of the characters was upside-down and the "o" was missing. Wade starting to get a headache. It could take him hours to get this figured out. Sanja could do it faster. Why was she so unwilling to help?

Sanja was staring into her computer screen, scrolling through another set of search results of the University History Department archives. So far no results for the Goldnes Dachl. She had already tried the Archeology department with no luck. She looked up when Wade appeared at the entrance to her cubicle but said nothing.

"So, what happened to you?" Wade started after a while. "After you ran off without saying anything? I was really worried. I almost got into a fight with this guy after you left. If I hadn't seen you today, who knows what would have happened!"

"What? You almost got into a fight?" she reached out and touched Wade's cheek where a slight bruise was still visible. "Are you OK?"

Wade leaned into her fingers for a second, savoring the feel of her cool palm against him, before forcing himself to refocus on the reason he come over in the first place. "I'm fine. We just got thrown out of the club. What happened to you?"

"Don't worry about me. What happened to you," Her eyes narrowed. "Did you have to talk to the police? They're cracking down on hard that more now. You have to be careful."

"It's nothing. I bumped into this guy looking for you and he spilled his drink. He'd already had a few too many... Come on, Sanja. You're stalling."

Sanja shot a glance to the side where some colleagues sat within earshot. "Wade, we can talk about this later. What have you found out about the letters from the Dachl?"

"Take a look," Wade slapped the paper with his transcriptions and attempted translations. "I was able to find some words, but it was taking forever. So, I ended up doing a Google Translate search on the whole thing and that's what they came up with. This could spell out school, without any of the vowels. I'm flailing, grasping at whatever looks like it might mean something."

"Do you have a dictionary you could use to check? We have that reference library in the breakroom, oder?"

"Yes, but without really knowing Serbian that isn't much help to me. It took me an hour to search just one panel. I do German and English, but you..."

"No, Wade. I'm not translating it. I said so already!"

Wade threw up his arms, "Sanja, you're the only one whose qualified to work on this. Why are you so reluctant to work on it?"

"OK, you wanna know? The media team rejected my application. They rejected it because they thought my German wouldn't be good enough to work at the speed they needed. Even though I'd sent them a sample of my work and they hadn't even called me in for a test." Sanja buried her head in her hands. Wade rubbed her back. Her felt her shuddering under his touch. "I bin am Sprung was Tolles zu machen. Wenn ich nur ein Springbrett finden kann! (I'm to do something great. If I could just find a springboard)"

"Those stuck-up fools don't know what they're missing. They were probably offended that you didn't use a lot of meaningless buzzwords in your resume." Wade gave Sanja a gentle caress between the shoulder blades where he knew she enjoyed it.

Sanja gave a sniffly laugh.

"Listen. Gabi got a project translating the graphite for some snobby art-house movie. It's not quite what you want, but if this project goes well, I'm sure she's be happy to put you on the team. If you let her know you're interested. Working with this will show you that you can work with similar material."

"Ugh! Schon gut! Her damit! (Fine! Give it here)" Sanja grabbed the folder from Wade. "It's going to be like talking to my grandmother."

Sanja looked at the pictures and the transcribed letters Wade had written out. The last time she'd read anything significant in Serbian was when her mother had texted her a newspaper article from Belgrade. It made her feel like she'd been given a homework assignment. The most Serbian she used most days was texting her mother or inviting friends to go out. She would forget common words or phrases, only the German would come to her and German phrases kept popping up when she spoke Serbian. Except for a few curses or pet-names, she thought and spoke in German. No one could curse like a Serb, of course. Or cook. Whenever she needed a recipe, she always made Ćevapčići, Wurst just wouldn't do.

She made switched a few characters that she knew Wade had gotten wrong in his transcription, some checked out when she compared her version with the Cyrillic in the pictures, in others Wade had gotten it right. Most didn't spell out a word in any case. One string, maybe, spelled out таверн, where a traveler could get a bed and beer for the night, if you read it backwards and squinted. Even Wade's "school" was questionable. Any strings that did end up spelling something were unintentional, she concluded, it was simply a string of letters dressed up in an empty façade.

Chapter 2 - The plot thickens

That next morning, Wade's phone rang. "Carpenter. Guten Morgen."

"Guten Morgen, hier ist Martin Scheubel. Ich brauche einen Update. (Good morning.This is Martin Scheubel. I need an update)"

"Well, the Cyrillic inscriptions seem to spell out a few random words, but they don't make up a sentence or even seem to be connected to each other. The names Hapsburg and the Kingdom of Serbia are spelled out below their crests, but that's about the only meaningful thing we found."

"Hm, that is disappointing. Put it in your report and I'll look over your findings Friday. In the meantime, I was able to uncover some infra-red images that were taken of the panels before they were destroyed. There seems to be writing underneath the original paintings, which did survive. I've just sent them to you in an email. These aren't Serbian, they're written with Roman letters. It doesn't seem to be German either, at least not a dialect that we recognize. An older message that was scrapped early in the project perhaps. Please take a look at them immediately. Remember, it is very important for our government that this gets done!"

"Why haven't you found anything on the panels?" Gabi's popped out from over his cubicle wall causing Wade to jump out of his chair.

"Sanja is having another look, but she's not hopeful."

"Herr Scheubel was certain, something was spelled there. He's a very important client and he's paying a lot to get this done quickly. We can't disappoint him."