8
" Her parents noticed, when Dominika turned five, that the little girl had a prodigious memory. She could recite lines from Pushkin, identify the concertos of Tchaikovsky. And when music was played, Dominika would dance barefoot around the Oriental carpet in the living room, perfectly in time with the notes, twirling and jumping, perfectly in balance, her eyes gleaming, her hands flashing. Vassily and Nina looked at each other, and her mother asked Dominika how she had learned all this. “I follow the colors,” said the little girl.
“What do you mean, ‘the colors’?” asked her mother. Dominika gravely explained that when the music played, or when her father read aloud to her, colors would fill the room. Different colors, some bright, some dark, sometimes they “jumped in the air” and all Dominika had to do was follow them. It was how she could remember so much. When she danced, she leapt over bars of bright blue, followed shimmering spots of red on the floor. The parents looked at each other again.
“I like red and blue and purple,” said Dominika. “When Batushka reads, or when Mamulya plays, they are beautiful.”
“And when Mama is cross with you?” asked Vassily.
“Yellow, I don’t like the yellow,” said the little girl, turning the pages of a book. “And the black cloud. I do not like that. "
― , Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy, #1)
10
" Walking home, Dominika thought furiously. _Snap out of it._ She was on assignment in a foreign country, living in her own apartment in a fairy-tale little city. It was wonderful. She had an important job to do, against a trained American intelligence officer. Well, he did not seem dangerous, but he was a CIA officer, and that was enough. Tonight she'd get him to talk more about himself. She'd ask him what he thought of Russians — he had not yet admitted he spoke the language. She would get him to talk about Moscow. He had to admit his posting there. As she walked quickly down lighted streets toward Yrjönkatu, unaware that her limp was more pronounced, she looked forward to the contact. "
― Jason Matthews , Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy, #1)
11
" Walking home, Dominika thought furiously. Snap out of it. She was on assignment in a foreign country, living in her own apartment in a fairy-tale little city. It was wonderful. She had an important job to do, against a trained American intelligence officer. Well, he did not seem dangerous, but he was a CIA officer, and that was enough. Tonight she'd get him to talk more about himself. She'd ask him what he thought of Russians — he had not yet admitted he spoke the language. She would get him to talk about Moscow. He had to admit his posting there. As she walked quickly down lighted streets toward Yrjönkatu, unaware that her limp was more pronounced, she looked forward to the contact. "
― Jason Matthews , Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy, #1)
14
" The hell with them. They wanted a Sparrow, they would get a Sparrow. No one knew she could see the colors. Mikhail had said she was the best student he ever had in seeing people. She would stay. She would learn.
She told herself this wasn't love. This school, this mansion secluded behind walls topped with broken glass, was an engine of the State that institutionalized and dehumanized love. It didn't count, it was physical sex, it was training, like ballet school. In the flickering light in the musty library Dominika told herself she was going to go through with this, to spite these vnebrachnyi rebyonoki, these bastards. "
― Jason Matthews , Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy, #1)
19
" She hadn’t foreseen this. (She knew he certainly had not.) In her service as well as his, Dominika knew it was zapreshchennyi, strictly forbidden, to become physically involved with an agent. Emotional complications are death to a clandestine operation. It’s not for no reason they whisk the Sparrow from the room after the honey trap and “Uncle Sasha” takes over, all business, because passions get in the way, you can’t get anywhere with an agent who is thinking about his khuy, the old instructors used to say, cackling and trying to get her to blush.
She was in his arms, kissing him, not frantically, but slowly, softly; his lips were warm and she wanted to drink them in. She felt a pressure building in her body, inside her skull, in her breasts, between her legs. His hands pressed on her back and she felt sweet and edgy, as if they were childhood friends who years later had discovered each other as adults. He breathed deep purple heat into her ear, and she felt it down her spine. "
― , Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy, #1)
