Рябина у окна перевод на английский

Prologue
Outside the window, covered with the first November snow, stood a tree. Rowan. Its clusters, bright red, like drops of frozen blood, weighed heavily on the thin branches. For the whole world, it was just a tree. For Anna Sergeyevna, it was a keeper, a witness, and a silent guardian of her entire life.
She was ninety-one years old, and her life seemed to have shrunk to the size of an old apartment in the city center, smelling of medicine, jam and dust. But outside this window, by this rowan tree, there was a whole universe. A universe of memory.
She sat in her Voltaire chair, covered with a blanket, and looked. She looked not at the snow, not at the passing cars, but through time. And the rowan tree, swaying from a gust of wind, seemed to nod to her, agreeing to become an interlocutor in this silent dialogue.
Today the nurse was supposed to come, then the social worker, then the neighbor would bring in some milk. But all this was background, noise. The main thing was happening here, between the chair and the window. Between her and the rowan tree.
She closed her eyes and the memories came flooding back like a wave, washing away the real walls, bringing back the smells and voices and pain of wounds long since healed.

Part One. Sapling
Summer 1947. Traces of war were still visible through the cracks in the wooden fences - ruins, wastelands, but life was already taking its toll. Senior Lieutenant Sergei Orlov returned from the front to the courtyard of house No. 24 on Mira Street. He returned with a piece of shrapnel in his lung, with medals on his only serviceable tunic and with enormous, unspent tenderness for his wife Lilya and daughter Annushka, whom he had left to protect as a three-year-old toddler, and now met as a skinny nine-year-old girl with huge, serious eyes.
One evening Sergei brought home a small, fragile tree with carved leaves.
"This is a rowan tree," he said, turning to Anna. "We will plant it together. As a symbol. So that our roots will take root here firmly. So that we will always have our own red, strong island of life."
They dug a hole right next to the window of her room. Anna held the tree, and her father buried the roots. His strong but emaciated hands were gentle and careful.
“She will grow up with you, daughter,” he smiled. “Look after her.”
He wasn't just planting a tree. He was planting a memory. A memory of those who didn't come back, of those who survived, of the hope of a peaceful, quiet life. Anna, clinging to his knee, nodded solemnly. She would watch.
The rowan took root. A year later it produced its first, still thin, bunches. And a year later, my father was gone. The splinter, which had been quietly dozing all this time, shifted and cut short his life in two days.
On the day of the funeral, Anna went out into the yard, hugged the thin trunk of the rowan tree and cried, cried so much that it seemed her tears could burn the young bark. The tree silently accepted her grief, absorbed it, becoming not just a tree, but a part of her soul.

Part Two. Shadow and Light
The years passed. The rowan tree grew stronger, its crown became thicker, and its berries brighter and more bitter. Anna grew up. Youth, Komsomol, college. At the window, behind which the already adult rowan tree rustled its leaves, she prepared for exams. Here, sitting on the windowsill, she confessed to her mother that she had fallen in love. His name was Victor. A physics student, with clear eyes and steady hands.
They got married in 1965. The wedding took place in the yard, under the rowan tree. The guests sang, and Victor, raising his glass, said: "To our rowan tree guardian! Let it protect our hearth!" He was not a sentimental person, but he felt this quiet, persistent beauty of the tree with his skin.
Then came happy years. Rowan saw Anna carrying a stroller with their firstborn son Misha into the yard. She saw how she taught him to walk, holding on to her trunk. She saw how a few years later a daughter appeared - Katyusha.
The tree was a silent participant in their lives. In the fall, children waited for the berries to be touched by frost to eat them, wincing from the bitterness and sweetness. In the winter, a bird feeder for titmice appeared on its branches. In the spring, Anna and Victor, already grown up, sat on a bench under its blossoming crown and silently held hands, looking at the clouds running across the sky.
It seemed like it would always be like this. But life rarely follows our plans.
Victor passed away in 1989. A heart attack. Sudden, like a lightning strike on a clear day. And again Anna went out to the mountain ash. Now alone. The children had grown up and moved away. She hugged the rough trunk, familiar to every crack, and cried again. And the tree, like many years ago, silently accepted her grief. It was a constant in a world where everything was changing and collapsing.

Part Three. Window to the World
The new century arrived indifferently. Misha lived in Germany, invited to move. Katya was in St. Petersburg, also invited. But Anna Sergeyevna had no intention of leaving.
"How can I leave her?" she said to the children, nodding towards the window. "She'll be waiting for me."
She became that very "grandmother by the window." The world behind the glass was seething, changing, unfamiliar young people were hurrying about their unfamiliar business. And her world narrowed to the TV, phone calls from children, and the rowan tree.
She talked to the tree. Out loud.
- Look, it's snowing again. There were already snowdrifts in November.
— The magpies are a bit restless today. Maybe it's a sign of bad weather?
- Misha called. Lena (his daughter) has exams. She's worried, poor thing.
The rowan tree was silent. But in its branches, answers rustled. Memories rustled. It was a living chronicle, and Anna Sergeyevna knew how to read it.
One particularly gloomy March day, the doorbell rang. An unfamiliar girl stood on the threshold.
- Hello, my name is Sonya. I am from the development department. You know, we have a greening program... - the girl hesitated, seeing how a very old, but very perceptive woman stood before her.
“Speak frankly, dear,” Anna Sergeyevna said softly.
— We examined the old trees in the yard. Your rowan tree... it's very old. The roots have damaged the asphalt, and most importantly, the old branches could fall on people or cars. It... it needs to be cut down.
The silence in the room became thick as jelly. Anna Sergeyevna did not flinch, only her fingers clutched the back of the chair.
“No,” she said quietly but very clearly. “That won’t happen.”
- But, Anna Sergeevna...
- You can leave.
The girl left, embarrassed and confused. And Anna Sergeyevna went to the window and pressed her forehead to the cold glass.
"Don't be afraid," she whispered to the rowan tree. "I won't give you up. I won't let anyone hurt you."
She declared war. She called Misha, a lawyer by profession. He, sighing, began digging into the laws, looking for loopholes. She called Katya, a journalist. She, throwing up her hands, sat down to write an article about an old tree – the keeper of the memory of an entire family, a witness to history.
Commissions came. Anna Sergeyevna, leaning on a cane, went out into the yard and spoke. She spoke about her father, who planted this tree. About her husband. About her children. About how this was not just a tree, but a monument to an ordinary, but such a valuable human life. Her voice trembled, but her eyes burned with an unbending will.
The story got publicity. The local newspaper received letters from residents of the courtyard. Some wrote that the tree was indeed a nuisance. But most wrote that it was a symbol of their childhood, that they also ate its berries and always admired it in the fall.
The battle lasted for several months. In the end, a compromise solution was found: do not cut down the tree, but perform a gentle pruning of dangerous branches, strengthen it with support beams, and fence the trunk circle with a decorative fence.
Anna won the victory.

Epilogue
The snow was falling harder and harder, already thoroughly covering the ground and the rowan branches with a white fluffy blanket. Anna Sergeyevna dozed in her chair, lulled by the quiet hum of the city outside the window.
She had a dream. She was young, about seventeen. In the yard, under the rowan tree, her father, Sergei, was standing, smiling. Next to him was Victor, young and strong, hugging her shoulders. Little Misha and Katya were running. And all this was illuminated by a warm, golden light that does not exist in reality.
She woke up from a knock on the door. It was the social worker, Tatyana.
- Anna Sergeyevna, I brought you some soup. And a letter from my daughter, from St. Petersburg.
While Tatyana was heating up the dinner, Anna Sergeyevna opened the envelope. Inside was a letter and a photograph. Katya had taken the photograph last autumn: the window of an old apartment, and behind it, a rowan tree blazing scarlet. And under the tree, smiling, stood Anna Sergeyevna herself, wrapped in a downy shawl.
In the letter Katya wrote: "Mom, I was just at an exhibition of a young artist. And you know, there was a whole series of paintings called "Guardian Trees". And one painting was called "Rowan by the Window". I almost burst into tears right there in the hall. She depicted our tree, so strong, beautiful, eternal. At the bottom is the signature: "Witness of eras, keeper of the hearth". You see how important it is that you have been doing all your life - simply keeping."
Anna Sergeyevna put the letter aside and looked out the window again. The twilight was thickening, and in the light of the lantern the snow was swirling in a living round dance. The rowan tree, decorated with frost and scarlet clusters, stood majestic, calm and infinitely beautiful.
She was not just a tree. She was a silent friend, a faithful guardian, a living memory. Her rings held tears and laughter, farewells and meetings, wars and peaceful life.
Anna Sergeyevna smiled. Winter would come soon, then spring, and the rowan would turn green again. Life would go on. And she would sit by the window and watch. Watch and remember.
And while the rowan tree by the window was alive, its history was also alive.