A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Carnivorous Carnival (6 page)

Chapter Six

There are many difficult things in this world to hide, but a secret is not one of them. It is difficult to hide an airplane, for instance, because you generally need to find a deep hole or an enormous haystack, and sneak the airplane inside in the middle of the night, but it is easy to hide a secret about an airplane, because you can merely write it on a tiny piece of paper and tape it to the bottom of your mattress any time you are at home. It is difficult to hide a symphony orchestra, because you usually need to rent a soundproof room and borrow as many sleeping bags as you can find, but it is easy to hide a secret about a symphony orchestra, because you can merely whisper it into the ear of a trustworthy friend or music critic. And it is difficult to hide yourself, because you sometimes need to stuff yourself into the trunk of an automobile, or concoct a disguise out of whatever you can find, but it is easy to hide a secret about yourself, because you can merely type it into a book and hope it falls into the right hands. My dear sister, if you are reading this, I am still alive, and heading north to try and find you. Had the Baudelaire orphans been looking for an airplane as they stepped inside Madame Lulu's fortune-telling tent, they would have known to look for the tip of a wing, sticking out from under an enormous black tablecloth decorated with shiny silver stars, which hung over a table in the center of the tent. Had they been looking for a symphony orchestra, they would have known to listen for the sound of someone coughing or bumping up against an oboe as they hid in the corners of the tent, which were covered in heavy curtains. But the children were not looking for methods of air travel or professional musicians. They were looking for secrets, and the tent was so big that they scarcely knew where to begin looking. Was there news of the Baudelaire parents hidden in the cupboard that stood near the entrance? Could there be information about the Snicket file stuffed into the large trunk that stood in one of the corners? And was it possible the children could find out the meaning of V.F.D. by gazing into the crystal ball placed in the center of the table? Violet, Klaus, and Sunny looked around the tent, and then at one another, and it seemed that the secrets concerning them could be hidden just about anywhere. "Where do you think we should look?" Violet asked. "I don't know," Klaus replied, squinting all around him. "I'm not even sure what to look for." "Well, maybe we should look for answers the way Count Olaf did," Violet said. "He told the whole story of his fortune-telling experience." "I remember," Klaus said. "First he entered Madame Lulu's tent. We've done that. Then, he said they turned out all the lights." The Baudelaires looked up, and noticed for the first time that the ceiling of the tent was decorated with small lights in the shape of stars, matching the stars on the tablecloth. "Switch!" Sunny said, pointing to a pair of switches attached to one of the tent poles. "Good work, Sunny," Violet said. "Here, Klaus, walk with me so I can get a look at those switches." The two older Baudelaires walked freakishly over to the pole, but when they reached the switches Violet frowned and shook her head. "What's wrong?" Klaus asked. "I wish I had a ribbon," Violet said, "to tie up my hair. It's hard to think seriously with my powdery hair getting in my eyes. But my hair ribbon is somewhere at Heimlich...." Her voice trailed off, and Klaus saw that she had reached her hand into the pocket of Count Olaf's pants and was drawing out a ribbon that looked just like the one she usually wore. "Yerz," Sunny said. "It is mine," Violet said, looking at it closely. "Count Olaf must have kept it when he was preparing me for surgery, and left it in his pocket." "I'm glad you got it back," Klaus said, with a slight shudder. "I don't like to think about Olaf getting his filthy hands on our possessions. Do you need some help tying your hair up? It might be difficult using only one hand, and I don't think you should take your other one out from under the shirt. We don't want to mess up our disguise." "I think I can manage it with one hand," Violet said. "Ah, there we go. I feel less like a freak and more like Violet Baudelaire with my hair up like this. Now, let's see. Both these switches are attached to wires that run up to the top of the tent. One of them obviously controls the lights, but what does the other one do?" The Baudelaires looked up again, and saw something else attached to the ceiling of the tent. In between the stars was a small, round mirror, hanging from a piece of metal, which held it at an odd angle. Attached to the metal was a long strip of rubber, which led to a large knot of wires and gears, which in turn was attached to some more mirrors arranged in a sort of wheel. "What?" Sunny asked. "I don't know," Klaus said. "It sure doesn't look like anything I've read about." "It's an invention of some sort," Violet said, studying it carefully. She began to point to different parts of the strange device, but it was as if she were talking to herself instead of her siblings. "That piece of rubber looks like a fan belt, which transmits torque from an automotive engine in order to help cool the radiator. But why would you want to, oh, I see. It moves those other mirrors around, which...but how would..wait a minute. Klaus, see that small hole in the upper corner of the tent?" "Not without my glasses," Klaus said. "Well, there's a small rip up there," Violet said. "What direction are we facing, if we face that small hole?" "Let me think for a moment," Klaus said. "Last night, the sun was setting as we got out of the car." "Yirat," Sunny said, which meant "I remember, the famous hinterlands sunset." "And the car is over there," Klaus said, turning around and dragging his older sister with them. "So that way is west, and the rip in the tent faces east." "East," Violet said with a smile, "the direction of the sunrise." "That's right," Klaus said, "but what does that have to do with anything?" Violet said nothing, just stood and smiled at her siblings, and Klaus and Sunny smiled back. Even with the fake scars penciled on her face, Violet was smiling in a way the other Baudelaires recognized at once. It was the sort of smile that appeared when Violet had figured out a difficult problem, usually having to do with an invention of some sort. She had smiled this way when the siblings were in jail, and she figured out how a pitcher of water could help break them out. She had smiled this way when she had looked over some evidence she had found in a suitcase, which could convince Mr. Poe that their Uncle Monty had been murdered. And she was smiling this way now, as she looked up at the strange device on the ceiling, and then back down at the two switches on the wall. "Watch this," she said, and flicked the first switch. Immediately, the gears began to spin, and the long strip of rubber began to move, and the wheel of mirrors became a whirring circle. "But what does it do?" Klaus said. "Listen," Violet said, and the children could hear a low, buzzing hum coming from the machine. "That's the hum Count Olaf was talking about. He thought it was coming from the crystal ball, but it was coming from this invention." "I thought a magical hum sounded fishy," Klaus said. "Legror?" Sunny asked, which meant "But what about the lightning?" "You see how that larger mirror is angled?" Violet said. "It's pointed so that it reflects any light that comes out of the small hole in the tent." "But there isn't any light coming from it," Klaus said. "Not now," Violet said, "because the hole is facing east, and it's late in the afternoon. But in the morning, when Madame Lulu does her fortune-telling, the sun is rising, and the light of the sunrise would shine right on that mirror. And that mirror would reflect it onto the other mirrors, put into motion by the torquated belt..." "Wait," Klaus said. "I don't understand." "That's O.K.," Violet said. "Count Olaf doesn't understand either. When he walks into the tent in the morning, Madame Lulu turns this invention on and the room is filled with flickering lights. Remember when I used the refraction of light to make a signaling device at Lake Lachrymose? It's the same thing, but Lulu tells him that it's magical lightning." "But wouldn't Olaf look up and see that it wasn't magical lightning?" "Not if the lights were off," Violet said, flicking the other switch, and above them the stars went out. The cloth of the tent was so thick that no light from outside shone in, and the Baudelaires found themselves in utter darkness. It reminded the children of when they were climbing down the elevator shaft of 667 Dark Avenue, except that had been silent, and here they were surrounded by the sound of the machine's hum. "Eerie," Sunny said. "It is spooky," Klaus agreed. "No wonder Olaf thought it was a magical hum." "Imagine how it would feel if the room were flickering with lightning," Violet said. "That's the sort of trickery that makes people believe in fortune-telling." "So Madame Lulu is a fake," Klaus said. Violet flicked both switches again, and the lights went on as the invention went off. "She's a fake, all right," Violet said. "I bet that crystal ball is just plain glass. She tricks Count Olaf into thinking she's a fortune-teller, so he'll buy her things like lions and new turbans." "Chesro?" Sunny asked, and looked up at her siblings. By "Chesro?" Sunny meant something along the lines of, "But if she's a fake, how did she know that one of our parents was alive?" but her siblings were almost afraid to answer her. "She didn't, Sunny," Violet said quietly. "Madame Lulu's information is as fake as her magic lightning." Sunny made a small, quiet sound that her siblings could scarcely hear behind her beard, and hugged Violet and Klaus's legs while her little body shivered with sadness. Suddenly, it was Sunny's turn to bear the burden of Baudelaire grief, but she did not bear it for long, because Klaus thought of something that made the Baudelaires collect themselves. "Wait a minute," Klaus said. "Madame Lulu may be a fake, but her information might be real. After all, she always told Count Olaf where we were staying, and she was right about that." "That's true," Violet said. "I forgot about that." "After all," Klaus said, reaching with difficulty into his pocket. "We first thought that one of our parents might be alive after we read this." He unfolded a piece of paper that his sisters recognized as the thirteenth page of the Snicket file. There was a photograph, stapled to the page, which showed the Baudelaire parents, standing next to one man the Baudelaires had met briefly at the Village of Fowl Devotees, and one man the children did not recognize, and below the photograph was a sentence Klaus had read so many times that he did not need his glasses to read it again. "'Because of the evidence discussed on page nine, experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown,'" he recited. "Maybe Madame Lulu knows about this." "But how?" Violet asked. "Well, let's see," Klaus said. "Count Olaf said that after the appearance of magical lightning, Madame Lulu told him to close his eyes so she could concentrate." "There!" Sunny said, pointing to the table with the crystal ball. "No, Sunny," Violet said. "The crystal ball couldn't tell her. It's not magical, remember?" "There!" Sunny insisted, and walked over to the table. Violet and Klaus followed her, walking awkwardly, and saw what she was pointing at. Sticking out from under the tablecloth was a tiny speck of white. Kneeling down in their shared pants, the older Baudelaires could see it was the very edge of a piece of paper. "Good thing you're closer to the ground than we are, Sunny," said Klaus. "We never would have noticed that." "But what is it?" Violet asked, sliding it out from under the tablecloth. Klaus reached into his pocket again, removed his glasses, and put them on. "Now I feel less like a freak and more like myself," he said with a smile, and began to read out loud. '"My Dear Duchess, Your masked ball sounds like a fantastic evening, and I look forward to ...'" His voice trailed off, and he scanned the rest of the page. "It's just a note about some party," he said. "What's it doing underneath a tablecloth?" Violet asked. "It doesn't seem important to me," Klaus said, "but I guess it was important enough to Lulu that she hid it. "Let's see what else she's hiding," Violet said, and lifted the end of the tablecloth. All three Baudelaires gasped. It may seem strange to read that there was a library underneath Madame Lulu's table, but as the Baudelaire orphans knew, there are almost as many kinds of libraries as there are kinds of readers. The children had encountered a private library at the home of Justice Strauss, who they missed very much, and a scientific library at the home of Uncle Monty, who they would never see again. They had seen an academic library at Prufrock Preparatory School, and a library at Lucky Smells Lumbermill that was understocked, a word which here means "empty except for three books." There are public libraries and medical libraries, secret libraries and forbidden libraries, libraries of records and libraries of auction catalogs, and there are archival libraries, which is a fancy term for a collection of files and documents rather than books. Archival libraries are usually found at universities, museums, or other quiet places, such as underneath a table, where people can go and examine whatever papers they like, in order to find the information they need. The Baudelaire orphans gazed at the enormous piles of papers that were stuffed underneath the table, and realized that Madame Lulu had an archival library that just might contain the information they were looking for. "Look at all this," Violet said. "There are newspaper articles, magazines, letters, files, photographs, all sorts of documents. Madame Lulu tells people to close their eyes and concentrate, and then she looks through all this material and finds the answers." "And they can't hear her shuffling paper," Klaus said, "over the hum of the lightning device." "It's like taking a test," Violet said, "with all the answers hidden in your school desk." "Cheat!" Sunny said. "It is cheating," Klaus said, "but maybe her cheating can help us. Look, here's an article from The Daily Punctilio. " "VILLAGE OF FOWL DEVOTEES TO PARTICIPATE IN NEW GUARDIAN PROGRAM," Violet said, peering over his shoulder at the headline. "'The Council of Elders announced yesterday that they would care for the troublesome Baudelaire orphans,'" Klaus read, '"as part of the city government's new program inspired by the aphorism "It takes a village to raise a child."'" "That's how Count Olaf found us!" Violet said. "Madame Lulu pretended that the
crystal ball told her where we were, but she just read it in the newspaper!" Klaus flipped through a pile of paper until he saw his own name on a list. "Look," he said. "It's a list of new students at Prufrock Preparatory School. Somehow Madame Lulu got ahold of it and passed on the information to Olaf." "Us!" Sunny said, showing a photograph to her siblings. Violet and Klaus looked at it and saw their sister was right. The youngest Baudelaire had found a small, blurry photograph of the three Baudelaires sitting on the edge of Damocles Dock, where they had arrived for their stay with Aunt Josephine. In the background they could see Mr. Poe reaching his hand out to call for a taxi, while Violet stared glumly into a paper sack. "Those are the peppermints Mr. Poe gave us," Violet said quietly. "I'd almost forgotten about those." "But who took this?" Klaus asked. "Who was watching us that day?" "Back," Sunny said, and turned the photograph over. On the back, someone had written something in messy handwriting the children could scarcely read. "I think it says, 'This might be hopeful,'" Klaus said. "Or 'helpful,'" Violet said. "'This might be helpful.' And it's signed with one initial, I think it's an R, or maybe a K. But who would want a photograph of us?" "It gives me the shivers to think someone took our picture when we didn't know it," Klaus said. "That means someone could be taking our photograph at any moment." The Baudelaires looked around hurriedly, but could see no photographer lurking in the tent. "Let's calm down," Violet said. "Remember the time we watched a scary movie when our parents were out for the evening, and we were jumpy for the rest of the night? Every time we heard a noise we thought vampires were breaking into the house to take us away." "Maybe somebody was breaking into the house to take us away," Klaus said, and pointed to the photograph. "Sometimes things can go on right in front of your nose, but you don't know about them." 'Heebie-jeebies," Sunny said, which meant something like, "Let's get out of here. I'm really getting the creeps." "Me, too," Violet said, "but let's take all these documents with us. Maybe we can find someplace to look through them and find the information we want." "We can't take all these papers with us," Klaus said. "There are stacks and stacks. It would be like checking out every single book in the library, just to find the one you wanted to read." "We'll stuff our pockets," Violet said. "My pockets are already stuffed," Klaus said. "I have page thirteen of the Snicket file, and all those fragments from the Quagmire notebooks. I can't get rid of those, but I don't have room for anything else. It's as if all the world's secrets are here on paper, but which secrets do we take with us?" "Maybe we can look through it quickly right here," Violet said, "and take anything that has our names on it." "That's not the best method of research," Klaus said, "but I guess it will have to do. Here, help me lift the tablecloth so we can see everything better." Violet and Klaus began to lift the tablecloth together, but it was quite difficult to do in their disguise. Like eating an ear of corn, lifting the tablecloth while sharing a shirt was trickier than it looked, and the tablecloth slid back and forth as the older Baudelaires struggled with it. As I'm sure you know, if you slide a tablecloth back and forth, the things sitting on the tablecloth will slide, too, and Madame Lulu's crystal ball began to slide closer and closer to the edge of the table. "Mishap," Sunny said. "Sunny's right," Violet said. "Let's be careful." "Right," Klaus said. "We don't want..." Klaus did not get to finish his sentence about what he and his sisters did not want, because with a dull thunk and a loud, clattering crash! his sentence was finished for him. One of the most troublesome things in life is that what you do or do not want has very little to do with what does or does not happen. You might want to become the sort of author who works calmly at home, for example, but something could happen that would lead you to become the sort of author who works frantically in the homes of other people, often without their knowledge. You might want to marry someone you love very much, but something could happen that would prevent the two of you from ever seeing one another again. You might want to find out something important about your parents, but something could happen that would mean you wouldn't find out for quite some time. And you might want, at a particular moment, for a crystal ball not to fall off a table and shatter into a thousand pieces, and even if it happened that the crystal ball did shatter, you might want the sound not to attract anyone's attention. But the sad truth is that the truth is sad, and that what you want does not matter. A series of unfortunate events can happen to anyone, no matter what they want, and even though the three children did not want the flap of the fortune-telling tent to open, and they did not want Madame Lulu to step inside, as the afternoon turned to evening at Caligari Carnival, everything happened to the Baudelaire orphans that they did not want at all.