A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Vile Village (8 page)

Chapter Ten

Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion, which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea, you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some bloodthirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself, particularly if the idea comes from a sinister villain. "I don't care what that horrible man says," Violet said to her siblings as Detective Dupin's plastic footsteps faded away. "We're not going to choose which one of us will escape and who will be left to burn at the stake. I absolutely refuse to entertain the notion." "But what are we going to do?" Klaus asked. "Try to contact Mr. Poe?" "Mr. Poe won't help us," Violet replied. "He'll think we're ruining the reputation of his bank. We're going to escape." "Frulk!" Sunny said. "I know it's a jail cell," Violet said, "but there must be some way to get out." She pulled her ribbon out of her pocket and tied up her hair, her fingers shaking as she did so. The eldest Baudelaire had spoken confidently, but she did not feel as confident as she sounded. A cell is built for the specific purpose of keeping people inside, and she was not sure she could make an invention that could get the Baudelaires out of the uptown jail. But once her hair was out of her eyes, her inventing brain began to work at full force, and Violet took a good look around the cell for ideas. First she looked at the door of the cell, examining every inch of it. "Do you think you could make another lockpick?" Klaus asked hopefully. "You made an excellent one when we lived with Uncle Monty." "Not this time," Violet replied. "The door locks from the outside, so a lockpick would be of no use." She closed her eyes for a moment in thought, and then looked up at the tiny barred window. Her siblings followed her gaze, a phrase which here means "also looked at the window and tried to think of something helpful." "Boiklio?" Sunny asked, which meant "Do you think you could make some more welding torches, to melt the bars? You made some excel lent ones when we lived with the Squalors." "Not this time," Violet said. "If I stood on the bench and Klaus stood on my shoulders and you stood on Klaus's shoulders, we could probably reach the window, but even if we melted the bars, the window isn't big enough to crawl through, even for Sunny." "Sunny could call out the window," Klaus said, "and try to attract the attention of someone to come and save us." "Thanks to mob psychology, every citizen of V.F.D. thinks that we're criminals," Violet pointed out. "No one is going to come rescue an accused murderer and her accomplices." She closed her eyes and thought again, and then knelt down to get a closer look at the wooden bench. "Rats," she said. Klaus jumped slightly. "Where?" he said. "I don't mean there are rats in the cell," she said, hoping that she was speaking the truth. "I just mean 'Rats!' I was hoping that the bench would be made of wooden boards held together with screws or nails. Screws and nails are always handy for inventions. But it's just a solid, carved niece of wood, which isn't handy at all." Violet sat down on the solid, carved piece of wood and sighed. "I don't know what I can do," she admitted. Klaus and Sunny looked at one another nervously. "I'm sure you'll think of something," Klaus said. "Maybe you'll think of something," Violet replied, looking at her brother. "There must be something you've read that could help us." It was Klaus's turn to close his eyes in thought. "If you tilted the bench," he said, after a pause, "it would become a ramp. The ancient Egyptians used ramps to build the pyramids." "But we're not trying to build a pyramid!" Violet cried in exasperation. "We're trying to escape from jail!" "I'm just trying to be helpful!" Klaus cried. "If it weren't for you and your silly hair ribbons we wouldn't have been arrested in the first place!" "And if it weren't for your ridiculous glasses," Violet snapped in reply, "we wouldn't be here in this jail!" "Stop!" Sunny shrieked. Violet and Klaus glared angrily at one another for a moment, and then sighed. Violet moved over on the bench to make room for her siblings. "Come and sit down," she said gloomily. "I'm sorry I yelled at you, Klaus. Of course it's not your fault that we're here." "It's not yours, either," Klaus said. "I'm just frustrated. Only a few hours ago we thought we'd be able to find the Quagmires and save Jacques." "But we were too late to save Jacques," Violet said, shuddering. "I don't know who he was, or how he got his tattoo, but I know he wasn't Count Olaf." "Maybe he used to work with Count Olaf," Klaus said. "He said the tattoo was from his job. Do you think Jacques was in Olaf's theater troupe?" "I don't think so," Violet said. "None of Olaf's associates have that same tattoo. If only Jacques were alive, he could solve the mystery." "Pereg," Sunny said, which meant "And if only the Quagmires were here, they could solve the other mystery, the meaning of the real V.F.D." "What we need," Klaus said, "is deus ex machina." "Who's that?" Violet said. "It's not a who," Klaus said, "it's a what. 'Deus ex machina' is a Latin term that means 'the god from the machine.' It means the arrival of something helpful when you least expect it. We need to rescue two triplets from the clutches of a villain, and solve the sinister mystery surrounding us, but we're trapped in the filthiest cell of the uptown jail, and tomorrow afternoon we're supposed to be burned at the stake. It would be a wonderful time for something helpful to arrive unexpectedly." At that moment there was a knock on the door, and the sound of the lock unlatching. The heavy door of the Deluxe Cell creaked open and there stood Officer Luciana, scowling at them from beneath the visor of her helmet and holding a loaf of bread in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. "If it were up to me, I wouldn't be doing this," she said, "but Rule #141 clearly states that all prisoners receive bread and water, so here you go." The Chief of Police thrust the loaf and the pitcher into Violet's hands and slammed the door shut, locking it behind her. Violet stared at the loaf of bread, which looked spongy and unappetizing, and at the water pitcher, which was decorated with a painting of seven crows flying in a circle. "Well, at least we have some nourishment," she said. "Our brains need food and water to work properly." She handed the pitcher to Sunny and the loaf to Klaus, who looked at the bread for a long, long time. Then, he turned to his sisters, who could see that his eyes were filling up with tears. "I just remembered," he said, in a quiet, sad voice. "It's my birthday. I'm thirteen today." Violet put her hand on her brother's shoulder. "Oh, Klaus," she said. "It is your birthday. We forgot all about it." "I forgot all about it myself, until this very moment," Klaus said, looking back at the loaf of bread. "Something about this bread made me remember my twelfth birthday, when our parents made that bread pudding." Violet put the pitcher of water down on the floor, and sat beside Klaus. "I remember," she said, smiling. "That was the worst dessert we ever tasted." "Vom," Sunny agreed. "It was a new recipe that they were trying out," Klaus said. "They wanted it to be special for my birthday, but it was burned and sour and soggy. And they promised that the next year, for my thirteenth birthday, I'd have the best birthday meal in the world." He looked at his siblings, and had to take his glasses off to wipe away his tears. "I don't mean to sound spoiled," he said, "but I was hoping for a better birthday meal than bread and water in the Deluxe Cell of the uptown jail in the Village of Fowl Devotees." "Chift," Sunny said, biting Klaus's hand gently. Violet hugged him, and felt her own eyes fill up with tears as well. "Sunny's right, Klaus. You don't sound spoiled." The Baudelaires sat together for a moment and cried quietly, entertaining the notion of how dreadful their lives had become in such a short time. Klaus's twelfth birthday did not seem like such a long time ago, and yet their memories of the lousy bread pudding seemed as faint and blurry as their first sight of V.F.D. on the horizon. It was a curious feeling, that something could be so close and so distant at the same time, and the children wept for their mother and their father and all of the happy things in their life that had been taken away from them since that terrible day at the beach. Finally, the children cried themselves out, and Violet wiped her eyes and struggled to give her brother a smile. "Klaus," she said, "Sunny and I are prepared to offer you the birthday gift of your choice. Anything at all that you want in the Deluxe Cell, you can have." "Thanks a lot," Klaus said, smiling as he looked around the filthy room. "What I'd really like is deus ex machina." "Me, too," Violet agreed, and took the pitcher of water from her sister to drink from it. Before she even took a sip, however, she looked up, and stared at the far end of the cell. Putting down the pitcher, she quickly walked to the wall and rubbed some dirt away to see what the wall was made of. Then looked at her siblings and began to smile. "Happy birthday, Klaus," she said. "Officer Luciana brought us deus ex machina." "She didn't bring us a god in a machine " Klaus said. "She brought water in a pitcher." "Brioche!" Sunny said, which meant "And bread!" "They're the closest thing to a god in a machine that we're going to get," Violet said. "Now get up, both of you. We need the bench-- it'll be handy after all. It's going to work as a ramp, just as Klaus said." Violet placed the loaf of bread up against the wall, directly under the barred window, and then tilted the bench toward the same spot. "We're going to pour the pitcher of water so it runs down the bench, and hits the wall," she said. "Then it'll run down the wall to the bread, which will act like a sponge and soak up the water. Then we'll squeeze the bread so the water goes into the pitcher, and start over." "But what will that do?" Klaus asked. "The walls of this cell are made of bricks," Violet said, "with mortar between the bricks to keep them together. Mortar is a type of clay that hardens like glue, so a mortar-dissolver would loosen the bricks and allow us to escape. I think we can dissolve the mortar by pouring water on it." "But how?" Klaus asked. "The walls are so solid, and water is so gentle." "Water is one of the most powerful forces on earth," Violet replied. "Ocean waves can wear away at cliffs made of stone." "Donax!" Sunny said, which meant something like, "But that takes years and years, and if we don't escape, we'll be burned at the stake tomorrow afternoon." "Then we'd better stop entertaining the notion, and start pouring the water," Violet said. "We'll have to keep it up all night if we want to dissolve the mortar. I'll stand at this end, propping up the bench. Klaus, you stand next to me and pour the water. Sunny, you stand near the bread, and bring it back to me when it's soaked up all the water. Ready?" Klaus took the pitcher in his hands and held it up to the end of the bench. Sunny crawled over to the loaf of bread, which was only a little bit shorter than she was. "Ready!" the two younger Baudelaires said in unison, and together the three children began to operate Violet's mortar-dissolver. The water ran down the bench and hit the wall, and then ran down the wall and was soaked up in the spongy bread. Sunny quickly brought the bread to Klaus, who squeezed it into the pitcher, and the entire process began again. At first, it seemed as if the Baudelaires were barking up the wrong tree, because the water seemed to have no more effect against the wall of the Deluxe Cell than a silk scarf would have against a charging rhinoceros, but it soon became clear that water, unlike a silk scarf, is indeed one of the most powerful forces on earth. By the time the Baudelaires heard the flapping of the V.F.D. crows as they flew in a circle before heading downtown for their afternoon roost, the mortar between the bricks was slightly mushy to the touch, and by the time the last few rays of the sun were shining through the tiny barred window, quite a bit of the mortar had actually begun to wear away. "Grespo," Sunny said, which meant something like, "Quite a bit of the mortar has actually begun to wear away." "That's good news," Klaus said. "If your invention saves our lives, Violet, it will be the best birthday present you've ever given me, including that book of Finnish poetry you bought me when I turned eight." Violet yawned. "Speaking of poetry, why don't we talk about Isadora Quagmire's couplets? We still haven't figured out where the triplets are hidden, and besides, if we keep talking it'll be easier to stay awake." "Good idea," Klaus said, and recited the poems from memory: "For sapphires we are held in here. Only you can end our fear. Until dawn comes we cannot speak. No words can come from this sad beak. The first thing you read contains the clue: An initial way to speak to you." The Baudelaires listened to the poems and began to entertain every notion they could think of that might help them figure out what the couplets meant. Violet held the bench in place, but her mind was on why the first poem began "For sapphires we are held in here," when the Baudelaires already knew about the Quagmire fortune. Klaus poured the water out of the pitcher and let it run down to the wall, but his mind was on the part of the poem that said "The first thing you read contains the clue," and what exactly Isadora meant by "the clue." Sunny monitored the loaf of bread as it soaked up the water again and again, but her mind was on the last line of the last poem they had received, and what "An initial way to speak to you" could mean. The three Baudelaires operated Violet's invention until morning, discussing Isadora's couplets the entire time, and although the children made quite a lot of progress dissolving the mortar in the cell wall, they made no progress figuring out Isadora's poems. "Water might be one of the most powerful forces on earth," Violet said, as the children heard the first sounds of the V.F.D. crows arriving for their uptown roost, "but poetry might be the most confusing. We've talked and talked, and we still don't know where the Quagmires are hiding." "We need another dose of deus ex machina " Klaus said. "If something helpful doesn't arrive soon, we