Увядание перевод на английский

Prologue
He had always believed that memory had a smell. Not bright, not flashy, but ghostly, barely perceptible, like pollen on a butterfly's wings. For Artem, this smell was the dust of old books in his grandfather's study, mixed with the bitter aroma of fading roses in the garden. The smell of late summer. The smell of withering.
It was this smell that greeted him when, after ten years of absence, he crossed the threshold of the family estate "Cherry Orchard". The air in the house was motionless, thick and sweetish-bitter, as if it had not been aired for years, but only poured from room to room. Artyom threw his suitcase in the hallway on the parquet, worn to a matte shine by generations of feet, and froze, listening to the silence. It was not empty, but rich, dense, as if unspoken words and unsaid stories were floating in it.
He returned because he received a letter from the old butler, Philip Matveevich. The letter was short, like a telegram: "Master Artem Sergeyevich, come. Something is wrong with the house. It is withering. Yours, F.M."
Artem chuckled then, in his noisy Moscow apartment with glass walls and a view of the eternally rushing city. "Is the house fading? The old man is talking nonsense." But something, some ancient string stretched between his temples, began to tremble and ring anxiously. And he went. He abandoned everything: a successful business selling "eternal" furniture made of plastic and steel, an arrogant fianc;e who considered it bad form to have a family nest somewhere in the wilderness, and went to his homeland, which he had been trying to forget all these years.
Now he stood in the center of the room and felt the silence envelop him, and the familiar smell penetrated his lungs, his blood, his brain. It was not just the smell of old age. It was the smell of illness.

Part One. Cracks
Philip Matveyevich turned out to be even more withered and looked like an old, solid tree root. He met Artem with his usual stiffness, but in his eyes, small and deep-set, genuine relief shone.
“Master,” he croaked, “you have arrived. Thank God.”
"What's going on here, Philip Matveyevich?" Artem asked, following him into the dining room, where a samovar and a plate of stale gingerbread were already on the table. "What do you mean, 'the house is withering'?"
The butler turned slowly towards him, his hands shaking slightly.
- He is ill, sir. At first it was little things. The plasterwork began to crumble from the ceiling in the blue drawing room. Not from old age, no. They... they darkened, became stained, like mold, and then crumbled. Then the books in the library... Do you remember the oak shelves?
Artem nodded, clenching his fingers. The library was his grandfather's shrine.
— They started to show stains. Like the wood was rotting from the inside. But it was dry! I checked. It was just… falling apart. And then the smells started.
— What smells?
- That very one, - the old man sighed. - The smell of fading flowers. It comes from the walls. Especially at night.
An inspection of the house confirmed the old man's words. The house, always famous for its durability and well-kept appearance, was sick. Yellowish-brown stains, similar to traces of dried water, were creeping along the walls, covered with expensive wallpaper, but there was no dampness. In the mother's room, which always smelled of lavender, there was now a heavy, cloying smell of rotting petals. In the study of his father, who died in a car accident when Artem was fifteen, the huge oak desk had dried out and cracked in half. The crack was unnaturally even, as if it had been sawed.
Artem walked through the rooms, and it seemed to him that the house was sighing. Deeply, with effort, like an old man who can't breathe. He felt someone's gaze on him, heavy, concentrated. But apart from him and Philip Matveyevich, there was no one else in the house.
In the evenings, he began to hear whispers. Unclear, coming either from behind the walls or from his own head. He caught fragments of phrases: "...give me back...", "...forgive me...", "...why?.." It drove him crazy. He, a man of numbers and logic, began to believe in ghosts.
One night he woke up from the distinct sound of crying. Childish, bitter, inconsolable. The sound came from the old nursery, where years ago he himself had burst into tears after his father's death. Artem's heart began to pound wildly. He stood up and, turning on the lights in the corridors, went towards the sound.
The nursery was empty. The moon through the window illuminated the empty crib, the chest of drawers, the toy box. The crying had died down. Artyom leaned his forehead against the door frame and suddenly felt dampness. He pulled his hand back - drops glistened on his fingers, as if from a tear. He looked at the door frame - from there, from a crack in the wood, a liquid was slowly oozing, transparent and salty to the taste.
The house was crying.

Part Two. Roots
Artem realized that a rational approach alone was not enough. He began digging through the family archive. Old letters, diaries, photographs. Philip Matveevich helped him, bringing folders with dusty folios.
The history of the house and family was dark and confusing. Artem's great-grandfather, Sergei Vladimirovich, built the Cherry Orchard with money whose source was dubious. There were rumors of ruining competitors, of deals with dubious people. His wife, the beautiful Anna, died young under strange circumstances. Officially, from typhus. But in the diary of the maid, whom Artem found in the pantry, there was a vague mention of "the melancholy that ate the lady from the inside."
Artem's grandfather, Vasily Sergeyevich, was a tough, domineering man. He expanded the estate, but was famous for his cruelty to the peasants, and later to the collective farmers. In the family album, he was always photographed with a stern, dissatisfied face. His wife, Artem's grandmother, Sofia, looked dull in all the photographs, with eyes full of silent sadness. She loved roses and every day cut the most beautiful buds to put them in a vase in the living room. They said that she did this to somehow enliven the gloomy atmosphere of the house.
Artem's father, Sergei Vasilievich, was the complete opposite - a dreamer, a poet, a weak manager. He married a simple teacher from the city, Artem's mother. They loved each other madly, and for a short time the house was filled with light and laughter. But the grandfather did not approve of the marriage. A terrible quarrel ensued. A week after it, Artem's parents left for the city and died in an accident. They said that Sergei Vasilievich was not himself at the wheel.
Artem read these stories, and piece by piece the puzzle came together to form a terrifying picture. The house was saturated with pain. Resentments. Unspoken hatred, suppressed love, unforgiven grievances. He was not just a witness to family dramas - he was their accomplice, absorbing the emotions of generations into his walls.
He found Grandma Sophia's diary. On the last page, dated the day of her death, was written in a trembling hand: "This house is sucking all the juices out of me. I am withering along with its roses. It demands repentance..."

Part Three. The Flower of Retribution
The crisis came on the night of the full moon. The smell of rot became unbearable. Pieces of wallpaper began to fall from the walls in the large living room, and underneath Artem saw not plaster, but something resembling blackened, rotten wood, covered with strange spots resembling mold in the shape of... roses.
The air hummed with a quiet, multi-voiced lamentation. The whispers grew louder, merging into one voice, full of suffering: “Repent… pay back your debts… let go…”
Artyom was kneeling in the center of the room. He was no longer a skeptic. He understood. The house was not a ghost. It was a living being, a huge symbiont that had been feeding on the energy of its inhabitants for decades. First, on their great-grandfather's ambition and greed, then on their grandfather's cruelty and despotism, then on their grandmother's sadness and melancholy, then on their parents' broken love and grief. And when he, Artyom, left, abandoning it, the house was left without food. And it began to feed on itself. To wither.
But he didn't want to die. He was trying to reach out. He was demanding healing.
Philip Matveyevich entered the hall, pale as a sheet.
“Master,” he whispered. “He demands… He demands the truth.”
Artyom raised his head. He knew what to do. He didn’t pray. He began to speak. Loudly, into the humming silence. He spoke of everything. Of his great-grandfather’s guilt, of his grandfather’s cruelty, of his grandmother’s pain. He asked for forgiveness on behalf of his father, who had given up too soon. He spoke of his own guilt—for running, for forgetting, for trying to erase this place from his memory.
“I remember!” he screamed, tears streaming down his face and dripping onto the oak floor. “I remember everything! And I forgive! I forgive everyone! And myself! We hurt you. Forgive us.”
He spoke for hours. Hysterically, breaking his voice. He poured out all the bitterness, all the pain that he had carried inside for years. He asked for forgiveness from the walls, from the portraits of his ancestors, from the ghosts that inhabited this house.
And the house began to respond.
The walls stopped humming. The smell of rot began to dissipate, replaced by the smell of damp earth after a thunderstorm. And then, in the very place where Artem's tears fell on the floor, something happened. The floorboards lifted slightly, and a thin, green sprout broke through the crack between them. It grew before our eyes, stretched out, gained strength and released a bud. The bud blossomed. It was a rose. Scarlet, perfect, sparkling with drops of dew.
The silence was complete, pure and deep. Tired, devastated, Artem collapsed on the floor and slept until the morning right there, at the roots of the rose that grew from the heart of the house.

Epilogue
A year passed. The Cherry Orchard was not the same. The scars on its walls remained, but they no longer bled. They healed, like old wounds heal, reminding of history, but causing no pain.
Artem stayed. He sold the Moscow company and invested the money in restoring the estate. He did not turn it into a glamorous hotel. He opened a small artistic residence for those seeking solitude and inspiration.
The rose in the center of the hall continued to bloom without wilting, its roots went deep under the floor, becoming part of the house. Philip Matveyevich seemed to have grown ten years younger and with an important air led the rare guests around the house, telling stories.
One evening, Artem sat in a chair in the library. The smell of old books was now clean, without any bitterness. He looked at the smoldering coals in the fireplace and felt not pain and melancholy, but a strange, deep calm.
The house slept. Its breathing was even and clear. It was no longer withering. It had healed, having accepted its history and finally found forgiveness. And Artem had healed with it. They breathed in unison, a man and a house, woven not by blood but by memory and acceptance.
He closed his eyes. In the silence, a new story was being born. A story not of decay, but of new life, growing through the thickness of old pain, like that red rose.