Dmitri shrugged as if this would be of little importance.
“Rosemary thought he married my mother for money … He must have been very poor if he did, because my mother didn’t have any money, either.” She sighed. “I’m frightened to ask her any more about him. Maybe it’s better that I remember him as being someone who was kind and who sang to me. So much is jumbled up in my mind when I try to think of my parents. The more I try to remember things, the more tangled and mixed up they become. I can’t tell anymore what is a story or a memory.”
“Your father is dead … My father also.”
“I am sorry.”
“Your mother?”
“My mother, too.” Sophie smiled defiantly. “I’ve been very careless … imagine losingbothparents!”
“Many people have been lost,” Dmitri whispered. The chandelier drops trembled as he shifted position slightly.
“What is the word for chandelier in Russian?” Sophie flicked one of the still trembling drops with a fingernail as he had done.
“Lyustra.”
“I like that word,” Sophie said. “It sounds likeillustration… like a picture in a storybook … as if you could look into the crystals and see things happening …” She knew from the faint frown on the boy’s forehead that he didn’t understand, but she felt it was important that she madeherselfunderstand, right now, sitting in this cloud of crystal that sprinkled light down onto the floor like a hoarfrost. She flicked another drop and it clinked deliciously, like the sound of Delphine’s laugh.
“I have one a bit like this.” She was going to pull the piece of glass out from under her shirt, but felt suddenly foolish. What would Dmitri think of her, wearing an old piece of glass as a necklace? Instead she said, “I love the way it sprinkles the light around.”
She could see where one string of the chandelier had been replaced. The wire was thinner and the glass was dirtier, grayer than the other strings.
“Woman upstairs makes me clean. Clean chandeliers! Me! Dmitri! She said they had not been cleaned for a hundred years! She said it was good punishment.”
“Punishment for what? What have you done?” Would he tell her what the argument was about?
The boy looked away. “I do most things she asks. But some things Icannotdo.”
Sophie felt it would be rude to ask him any more. Perhaps he had felt humiliated that the princess had spoken to him so harshly in front of Sophie. It was never very nice to admit you hadn’t pleased someone or done what they had asked.
They sat quietly for a moment, looking through the chandelier.
“She said I must not speak to you,” Dmitri muttered.
“She said the same to me!”
They looked at each other, but then looked away again.
Sophie said, “I don’t know why she doesn’t want us to talk.” She couldn’t look at his face because it was a lie: She knew why the princess didn’t want her to talk to him. She had called him “dirty” and said the word in such a way that made Sophie feel awkward. Feeling braver, she looked back at him. “But we don’t have to tell her, do we?” she whispered. “We could talk and not say anything? It could be a secret?”
“Many Volkonsky secrets,” the boy nodded. “But she never find out.”
They sat quietly for a few more seconds. Then Dmitri took a deep breath. “If I tell you something, you won’t tell woman upstairs?”
Sophie nodded but felt slightly uncomfortable. The princess had said they must trust each other, it was true, but there was something in Dmitri’s manner that made any agreement with the princess seem less important.
“There is Volkonsky song. I sing for you? But not for woman upstairs …”
The boy looked at her as if he could tell if Sophie would keep whatever secret he wanted to share. Then he spoke very slowly:“V glubinye vecherom, Snyeg bypadaet, kak almazy. Volky poyut vlunnom svetye.”
Sophie wanted to laugh. Dmitri could tell her any number of secrets if he was going to use Russian.
“I don’t understand your language,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“You never heard these words?”
“They’re very beautiful,” Sophie murmured, unsure what the boy was talking about. “But I don’t get to learn Russian at my school for another two years.”
