Прохлада перевод на английский

Part One: The Return
August in Prokhlad was not a season, but a state of matter. The air thickened to the consistency of hot honey, flowed through the narrow streets, hung over the market square, and made the grape vines on the old wooden balconies droop with impotence. The town, nestled between the hills and the wide, lazy river, existed in a half-sleep, broken only by the chirping of cicadas and the occasional burst of children's laughter at the pier.
The train arrived in the middle of the sun. Lera stepped out of the carriage, and a wave of hot air hit her in the face, with a familiar, almost tangible smell of dust, wormwood and river water. She stood on the platform, feeling like an uninvited guest in her own past. Fifteen years. The coolness had not changed. The same station with peeling plaster the color of egg yolk, the same elderly woman in uniform, lazily waving a flag, the same cats sleeping in the shade of a fence overgrown with burdocks.
She came in response to Aunt Marina's call. "Grandma is unwell, Lerochka. She's calling you." The words were simple, but there was something else in Aunt Marina's voice - anxiety, fatigue, maybe even fear. Grandma Anfisa, always as hard as flint, suddenly began to melt, fade away, and in her fading began to say strange things. About water, about shadows, about how it was time to repay the debt.
The house on Prirechnaya Street greeted her with cool semi-darkness and the smell of old wood, dried herbs and wax. Grandmother sat in a wicker chair by the window, looking at the lace curtains swaying in the gentle breeze from the river. Her hands, once strong and sinewy, now resembled yellowed papyrus.
"Veronica," she whispered, without turning her head. She was the only one who always called Lera by her full name. "You've arrived. I knew it."
Lera squatted down next to the chair and took her fragile hand.
- I'm here, granny.
The old woman turned her faded eyes towards her.
- He woke up, honey. The water turned cold. He remembers everything.
- Who remembers, grandma?
“The river,” Grandma Anfisa said simply and stared out the window again.
Aunt Marina, pouring tea in the kitchen, only sighed: "Don't pay attention, Lera. She's delirious. The doctors say it's age-related. But just be patient."
But Lera saw - this was not delirium. This was knowledge. The same one that always hovered in Prokhlada under the layer of hot summer. Knowledge of something dark and cold that lurked at the bottom of the river, in the deep pools under the steep ravine.
In the evening, Lera went to the river. The pier creaked under her feet just like it did in childhood. The water, dark and almost black in the twilight, was surprisingly icy. Not refreshing, but penetrating to the bone, prickly. She remembered her grandmother's words: "The water has become cold."
Laughter came from the shore. A group of teenagers were smoking by the boathouse. One of them, a lanky guy in a white T-shirt, separated from the group and walked toward her. Lera recognized him immediately - eyes too old for his young face, and a scar on his eyebrow. The son of Sergei, a local fisherman. Kostya.
- Lera? Veronica? Is that you? - He smiled, and there was something vaguely familiar in his smile.
- Yes. And you... Kostya? The boy with the oar?
"Ex-boy," he laughed. "I heard you came. The whole town already knows."
They started talking. About Moscow, about life, about how strange it is to return to places you remember as toys. But the conversation kept returning to the river.
- Something's wrong with the water, - Kostya suddenly said, looking at the dark surface. - Strange fish have appeared, dead, cold as ice. And people... Old people say that the pool on the steep bank sucks you in stronger. Last week, Sergei Petrovich's boat capsized... He says that someone pulled his leg. From below.
He said this without a shadow of a smile. And in his eyes Lera saw the same thing she heard in her aunt's voice - a quiet, deep fear.

Part Two: Shadows in the Water
At night, Lera woke up from the cold. It was stuffy in the house, but she was shivering. She threw on a robe and went out into the garden. Moonlight flooded the street, turning it into a black and white photograph. And she saw it.
A figure at the other end of the street, by the gate leading to the river. Tall, thin, almost weightless. A woman in a long light dress, soaking wet. Water was running off her and the hem of her dress, forming dark spots on the dusty road. She was not walking, but rather gliding, not touching the ground. Her face was not visible, only a silhouette against the moonlit path on the river.
Lera froze, unable to move. The cold emanating from the figure reached her, burning her lungs with icy steam.
The figure turned its head in her direction. There were no eyes, only a feeling of emptiness, darkness and bottomless, silent melancholy. And suddenly… it was gone. It didn’t run away, but dissolved into the air, like fog.
In the morning, in the place where she stood, Lera found a small puddle of water and... seaweed. Not river water, but some strange, dark green, almost black, slimy to the touch and cold as a corpse.
From that day on, Prokhlada began to reveal its secrets. Lera rummaged through her grandmother's chests, found old photographs and letters. She talked to a local historian, Uncle Misha, who spent his days in the library's reading room.
He told her a story that the town preferred not to remember. A hundred years ago, on a steep bank, in the deepest pool, a bride drowned. The local beauty Arina. They said that a rival had put the evil eye on her, that she had thrown herself into the water out of unhappy love. But there were other whispers. That she had been led into the water by the one who lived in the pool. The water spirit. Or something worse. Since then, the river sometimes took a victim. And always before that, the water became unnaturally cold, and at night, a "wet maiden" was seen by the water - the ghost of Arina, who was looking for a mate.
"Your grandmother, Anfisa," Uncle Misha said, lowering his voice, "she was Arina's friend. They were walking together on the ravine that evening. Only Anfisa returned."
Lera felt an icy lump in her chest. She remembered her grandmother's words: "He remembers everything." And "it's time to repay the debt."
Kostya became her guide and ally. Together they tried to get to the bottom of the truth. They found old newspapers with reports of accidents on the river, all of which coincided with sudden cold spells. They talked to old people who reluctantly told of "cold souls" at the bottom of the river.
The pool on the steep bank began to beckon Lera. Standing on the edge of the cliff, she looked down at the dark, almost motionless water. A grave cold and silence wafted from there. Sometimes it seemed to her that she saw a pale face with dark hollows instead of eyes in the depths.

Part Three: Debt
Grandmother was getting worse. She hardly got out of bed anymore, and in her delirium she spoke more and more clearly.
“We were laughing,” she whispered, clutching Lera’s hand with icy fingers. “She said she would go into the water up to her knees to cool her feet. And he… he grabbed her. It wasn’t a hand, Veronica… It was something slippery, strong. I ran to call for help, but when we returned… there was no one there. Just ripples in the water. And on the shore… her scarf. We all decided that she had simply drowned. But I knew. I always knew. And I kept quiet. I had to keep quiet, otherwise he would have come for me too. And for my children. But now… now the debt must be repaid. He has come for his own.”
Leroux was overcome with horror. Not supernatural, but the most human. Grandmother was not guilty. She was scared. And her lifelong silence was the price for the family's safety. And now the secret was coming out.
There was a disaster in the city. The little son of fisherman Sergei disappeared at night. The boy went to the river in the evening and did not return. Everyone rushed to search. They combed the shore, fishermen in boats probed the bottom with hooks.
Lera and Kostya were among those searching. And it was Lera, walking along the edge of a steep ravine, who saw something white in the water. A child's T-shirt. It was lying in the shallows at the very edge, where the bottomless depths began.
“He’s here,” she said to Kostya, and her voice was strange. “He took him there.”
Kostya looked at the icy water, at her face, and understood everything without words. He didn't laugh at his grandmother's stories. He grew up here. He felt the river.
“What to do?” he asked simply.
"He's demanding a debt," Lera said. "He's been waiting all these years. He's been waiting for grandma to get weak. He took the boy instead."
She didn't know where this confidence came from, but she knew it was true.
“No,” Kostya suddenly said sharply. “He won’t get anyone.”
He grabbed a strong rope from the ground, which was used by fishermen, and tied one end of it to an old willow growing on the cliff.
- What are you doing?
- He wants a soul? Let him take mine. I won't give up the child.
Lera wanted to shout "no", but it was too late. Kostya threw off his jacket and dove into the black water of the pool.
The minutes seemed like an eternity. There was no splash or movement on the surface of the water. Only a terrible, unnatural cold emanating from this place.
And suddenly the water began to bubble. Air bubbles appeared on the surface. And then… silence.
Lera's heart stopped. She was about to jump into the water herself when she saw movement. Kostya's head appeared from the water. He was pale as death, his teeth chattered from the cold, but in one hand he was clutching the hand of a small boy. The child was unconscious, icy.
With the help of other fishermen, they pulled them ashore. The boy was alive. They began to pump him out.
Lera, trembling, threw a blanket over Kostya.
- What is it? What did you see? - she whispered.
Kostya looked ahead with an unseeing gaze.
“Cold,” he hissed. “Darkness. And… her. She was there. She helped me. She pointed to the boy, caught on a snag in the shallows. And then… she pushed us away. Pushed us away from the deep. From him.
He looked at Lera, and there was relief and horror in his eyes.
- She paid the debt. For everyone.

Epilogue
The boy survived. The story was dismissed as a miracle, a coincidence. That's how they preferred to think in Prokhlada.
Grandma Anfisa died quietly, a week later. There were many people at her funeral. Lera stood by the coffin and looked at her calm, peaceful face. The knowledge no longer tormented her.
The next day, Lera came to the steep bank again. The water in the river was warm again, summery, alive. She no longer felt that chilling cold.
She threw a bouquet of wild flowers into the water. Not in memory of her grandmother. But in memory of the one whose debt had finally been paid. Of Arina, who, even as a prisoner of the cold depths, retained enough humanity to save the child and free her old friend.
Lera left Prokhlada on the morning train. Kostya saw her off on the platform.
“Will you come back?” he asked.
Lera looked at the city, at the river, at his face. The coolness was no longer a place for her where ghosts lived. It had become a place where people who remember lived.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll be back.”
The train started moving. She leaned out the window, and the last thing she felt was a warm wind from the river, smelling of sagebrush and life. The coolness left her. But now she knew that a part of her would always remain in this town, where the past never died, but only slumbered deep, beneath the warm surface of a summer day.