"Throwing people into pits isn't really my job," Count Olaf said nervously to the crowd. "I'm more of an actor."
"I have an idea," Esmé said suddenly, in a false sweet voice, "Madame Lulu, why don't you walk down that plank and throw your freak to its death?"
"This is not really my job either, please," Madame Lulu protested, looking at the children nervously. "I am fortune-teller, not freak-thrower."
"Don't be so modest, Madame Lulu," Count Olaf said with a nasty smile. "Even though the lion show was my idea, you're the most important person here at the carnival. Take my place on the plank, so we can see someone get pushed to their death."
"What a nice offer!" the reporter cried. "You're a very generous person, Count Olaf!"
"Let's see Madame Lulu throw Beverly and Elliot into the pit!" cried the pimpled man, and everyone cheered again. As mob psychology began to take hold, the crowd seemed to be as flexible as it was excited, and they gave the fortune-teller an enormous round of applause as she nervously took Count Olaf's place on the plank. The piece of wood teetered for a moment from the weight of so many people standing on it, and the older Baudelaires had to struggle to keep their balance. The crowd gasped in excitement, and then groaned as the two disguised children managed not to fall.
"This is so exciting!" squealed the reporter. "Maybe Lulu will fall in, too!"
"Yes," Esmé snarled. "Maybe she will."
"I don't care who falls in!" announced the pimpled man. Frustrated by the delay in violence and sloppy eating, he tossed his cold beverage into the pit and splashed several lions, who roared in annoyance. "To me, a woman in a turban is just as freaky as a two-headed person. I'm not prejudiced!"
"Me neither!" agreed someone who was wearing a hat with the words CALIGARI CARNIVAL printed on it. "I'm just eager for this show to finally get started! I hope Madame Lulu is brave enough to push that freak in!"
"It doesn't matter if she's brave enough," the bald man replied with a chuckle. "Everyone will do what they're expected to do. What other choice do they have?"
Violet and Klaus had reached the end of the plank, and they tried as hard as they could to think of an answer to the bald man's question.
Below them was a roaring mass of hungry lions, who had gathered so closely together below the wooden board that they just seemed to be a mass of waving claws and open mouths, and around them was a roaring crowd of people who were watching them with eager smiles on their faces. The Baudelaires had succeeded in getting the crowd more and more frantic, but they still hadn't found an opportunity to slip away in the confusion, and now it seemed like that opportunity would never knock. With difficulty, Violet turned her head to face her brother, and Klaus squinted back at her, and Sunny could see that her siblings' eyes were filled with tears.
"Our luck may have run out," she said.
"Stop whispering to your heads!" Count Olaf ordered in a terrible voice. "Madame Lulu, push them in this instant"
"We're increasing the suspense!" Klaus cried back desperately.
"The suspense has been increased enough," replied the man with the pimpled chin impatiently. "I'm getting tired of all this stalling!"
"Me, too!" cried the woman with dyed hair.
"Me, too!" cried someone else standing nearby. "Olaf, hit Lulu with the whip! That'll get her to stop stalling!"
"Just one moment, please," Madame Lulu said, and took another step toward Violet and Klaus. The plank teetered again, and the lions roared, hoping that their lunch was about to arrive. Madame Lulu looked at the elder Baudelaires frantically and the children saw her shoulders shrug slightly underneath her shimmering robe.
"Enough of this!" the hook-handed man said, and stepped forward impatiently. "I'll throw them in myself. I guess I'm the only person here brave enough to do it!"
"Oh, no," Hugo said. "I'm brave enough, too, and so are Colette and Kevin."
"Freaks who are brave?" the hook-handed man sneered. "Don't be ridiculous!"
"We are brave," Hugo insisted. "Count Olaf, let us prove it to you, and then you can employ us!"
"Employ you?" Count Olaf asked with a frown.
"What a wonderful idea!" Esmé exclaimed, as if the idea had not been hers.
"Yes," Colette said. "We'd like to find something else to do, and this seems like a wonderful opportunity."
Kevin stepped forward and held out both his hands. "I know I'm a freak," he said to Olaf, "but I think I could be just as useful as the hook-handed man, or your bald associate."
"What?" the bald man snapped. "A freak like you, as useful as me? Don't be ridiculous!"
"I can be useful," Kevin insisted. "You just watch."
"Stop all this bickering!" the pimpled man said crankily. "I didn't visit this carnival to hear people argue about their work problems."
"You're distracting me and my other head," Violet said in her low, disguised voice. "Let's get off this plank and we can all discuss this matter calmly."
"I don't want to discuss things calmly!" cried the woman with dyed hair. "I can do that at home!"
"Yes!" agreed the reporter from The Daily Punctilio. "'PEOPLE DISCUSS THINGS CALMLY' is a boring headline! Somebody throw somebody else into the lion pit, and we'll all get what we want!"
"Madame Lulu will do it, please!" Madame Lulu announced in a booming voice, and grabbed Violet and Klaus by the shirt. The Baudelaires looked up at her and saw a tear appear in one of her eyes, and she leaned down to speak to them. "I'm sorry, Baudelaires," she murmured quietly, without a trace of accent, and reached down to Violet's hand and took the fan belt away from her.
Sunny was so upset that she forgot to growl. "Trenceth!" she shrieked, which meant something along the lines of, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" but if the fake fortune-teller was ashamed of herself she did not behave accordingly.
"Madame Lulu always says you must always give people what they want," she said grandly in her disguised voice. "She will do the throwing, please, and she will do it now!"
"Don't be ridiculous," Hugo said, stepping forward eagerly. "I'll do it!"
"You're the one being ridiculous!" Colette said, contorting her body toward Lulu. "I'll do it!"
"No, I'll do it!" Kevin cried. "With both hands!"
"I'll do it!" the bald man cried, blocking Kevin's way. "I don't want a freak like you for a coworker!"
"I'll do it!" cried the hook-handed man.
"I'll do it!" cried one of the white-faced women.
"I'll do it!" cried the other one.
"I'll get someone else to do it!" cried Esmé Squalor.
Count Olaf unwound his whip and flicked it over the heads of the crowd with a mighty snap! that made everyone cower, a word which here means "cringe and duck and hope not to get whipped." "Silence!" he commanded in a terrible roar. "All of you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You're arguing like a bunch of children! I want to see those lions devouring someone this very instant, and whoever has the courage to carry out my orders will get a special reward!"
This speech, of course, was just the latest example of Count Olaf's tedious philosophy concerning a stubborn mule moving in the proper direction if there is a carrot dangling in front of it, but the offer of a special reward finally got the crowd as frantic as possible. In a moment, the crowd of carnival visitors had become a mob of volunteers, all of whom swarmed eagerly forward to finally throw someone to the lions. Hugo lunged forward to push Madame Lulu, but bumped into the box that the white-faced women were holding, and the three of them fell in a heap at the edge of the pit. The hook-handed man lunged forward to grab Violet and Klaus, but his hook caught in the cord of the reporter's microphone and became hopelessly entangled. Colette contorted her arms so as to grab Lulu's ankles, but grabbed Esmé Squalor's ankle by accident, and got her hands all twisted around one of Esmé's fashionable shoes. The woman with dyed hair decided she might give it a try, and leaned forward to push the elder Baudelaires, but they stepped to the side and the woman fell into her husband, who accide
ntally slapped the man with pimples on his chin, and the three carnival visitors began arguing loudly. Quite a few people who were standing nearby decided to get in on the argument, and gathered around to shout in each other's faces. Within moments of Count Olaf's announcement, the Baudelaires were in the middle of a furious mass of humanity, who were standing over the children, yelling and pushing and preying on themselves like monsters of the deep, while the lions roared furiously in the pit below.
But then the siblings heard another sound in the pit, a horrible crunching and ripping sound that was far worse than the roaring of beasts. The crowd stopped arguing to see what was making the noise, but the Baudelaires were not interested in seeing anything more, and stepped back from the terrible sound, and huddled against one another with their eyes shut as tightly as possible. Even in this position, however, the children could hear the terrible, terrible sounds from the pit, even over the laughter and cheers of the carnival visitors as they crowded together at the edge of the pit to see what was happening, and so the three youngsters turned away from the commotion, and, with their eyes still closed, slipped away in the confusion, stumbling through all of the cheering people until at last they were in the clear, a phrase which here means "far enough away from the roller coaster that they could no longer see or hear what was going on."
But the Baudelaire orphans, of course, could still imagine what was happening, as I can imagine it, even though I was not there that afternoon and have only read descriptions of what occurred down in the pit. The article in The Daily Punctilio says that it was Madame Lulu who fell first, but newspaper articles are often inaccurate, so it is impossible to say if this is actually true. Perhaps she did fall first, and the bald man fell after her, or perhaps Lulu managed to push the bald man in as she tried to escape his grasp, only to slip and join him in the pit just moments later. Or perhaps these two people were still struggling when the plank teetered one more time, and the lions reached both of them at the same time. It is likely that I will never know, just as I will probably never know the location of the fan belt, no matter how many times I return to Caligari Carnival to search for it. At first I thought that Madame Lulu dropped the strip of rubber on the ground near the pit, but I have searched the entire area with a shovel and a flashlight and found no sign of it, and none of the carnival visitors whose houses I have searched seem to have taken it home for a souvenir. Then I thought that perhaps the fan belt was thrown into the air during all the commotion, and perhaps landed up in the tracks of the roller coaster, but I have climbed over every inch without success. And there is, of course, the possibility that it has burned away, but lightning devices are generally made of a certain type of rubber that is difficult to burn, so that possibility seems remote. And so I must admit that I do not know for certain where the fan belt is, and, like knowing whether it was the bald man or Madame Lulu who fell first, that this may be information that will never come to me. But I can imagine that the small strip of rubber ended up in the same place as the woman who removed it from the lightning device and gave it to the Baudelaire orphans, only to snatch it back at the last minute, and in the same place as the associate of Olaf's who was so eager to get a special reward. If I close my eyes, as the Baudelaire orphans closed their eyes as they stumbled away from this unfortunate event, I can imagine that the fan belt, like the bald man and my former associate Olivia, fell into the pit that Olaf and his henchmen had dug, and ended up in the belly of the beast.
Chapter Twelve
When the Baudelaire orphans finally opened their eyes, they found that they had stumbled to the entrance of Madame Lulu's fortune-telling tent, with the initials V.F.D. still staring out at them. Most of the carnival visitors had walked over to the lion pit to see the show, so the siblings were alone in the fading afternoon, and once again there was no one watching over them as they stood in front of the tent, trembling and crying quietly. The last time they had stood for so long at the tent's entrance, the decoration had seemed to change before their very eyes until they saw that it was not a painting of an eye, but the insignia of an organization that might help them. Now they stood and stared again, hoping that something would change before their very eyes until they saw what it was that they could do. But nothing seemed to change no matter how hard they looked. The carnival remained silent, and the afternoon continued to creep toward evening, and the insignia on the tent simply stared back at the weeping Baudelaires.
"I wonder where the fan belt is," Violet said finally. Her voice was faint and almost hoarse, but her tears had stopped at last. "I wonder if it fell to the ground, or was thrown onto the tracks of the roller coaster, or if it ended up — "
"How can you think about a fan belt at a time like this?" Klaus asked, although his voice was not angry. Like his sister, he was still trembling inside the shirt they shared, and felt very tired, as is often the case after a long cry.
"I don't want to think about anything else," Violet said. "I don't want to think about Madame Lulu and the lions, and I don't want to think about Count Olaf and the crowd, and I don't want to think about whether or not we did the right thing."
"Right," Sunny said gently.
"I agree," Klaus said. "We did the best we could."
"I'm not so sure," Violet replied. "I had the fan belt in my hand. It was all we needed to finish the invention and escape from this awful place."
"You couldn't finish the invention," Klaus said. "We were surrounded by a crowd of people who wanted to see someone thrown to the lions. It's not our fault that she fell in instead."
"And bald," Sunny added.
"But we made the crowd even more frantic," Violet said. "First we stalled the show, and then we used mob psychology to get them excited about throwing somebody into the pit."
"Count Olaf is the one who thought up this whole ghastly scheme," Klaus said. "What happened to Madame Lulu is his fault, not ours."
"We promised to take her with us," Violet insisted. "Madame Lulu kept her promise and didn't tell Count Olaf who we were, but we didn't keep ours."
"We tried," Klaus said. "We tried to keep ours."
"Trying's not good enough," Violet said. "Are we going to try to find one of our parents? Are we going to try to defeat Count Olaf?"
"Yes," Sunny said firmly, and wrapped her arms around Violet's leg. The eldest Baudelaire looked down at her sister and her eyes filled with tears.
"Why are we here?" she asked. "We thought we could put on disguises and get ourselves out of trouble, but we're worse off than when we began. We don't know what V.F.D. stands for. We don't know where the Snicket file is. And we don't know if one of our parents is really alive."
"There are some things we might not know," Klaus said, "but that doesn't mean we should give up. We can find out what we need to know. We can find out anything."
Violet smiled through her tears. "You sound like a researcher," she said.
The middle Baudelaire reached into his pocket and pulled out his glasses. "I am a researcher," he said, and stepped toward the entrance to the tent. "Let's get to work."
"Ghede!" Sunny said, which meant something like, "I almost forgot about the archival library!" and she followed her siblings through the flap in the tent.
As soon as the Baudelaire orphans stepped inside, they saw that Madame Lulu had made quite a few preparations for her escape with the children, and it made them very sad to think that she would never return to the fortune-telling tent to collect the things she had waiting for her. Her disguise kit was all packed up again, and waiting by the door so she could take it with her. There was a cardboard box standing next to the cupboard, filled with food that could be eaten on the journey. And laid out on the table, next to Madame Lulu's replacement crystal ball and various parts of the lightning device she had dismantled, was a large piece of paper that was badly torn and looked very old, but the Baudelaires saw at once that it could help them.
"It's a map," Violet said. "It's a map of the Mortmain Mountains. She must have had it am
ong her papers."
Klaus put his glasses on and peered at it closely. "Those mountains must be very cold this time of year," he said. "I didn't realize the altitude was so high."
"Never mind the altitude," Violet said. "Can you find the headquarters Lulu was talking about?"
"Let's see," Klaus said. "There's a star next to Plath Pass, but the key says that a star indicates a campground."
"Key?" Sunny asked.
"This chart in the corner of the map is called a key," Klaus explained. "You see? The map-maker explains what each symbol means, so the map doesn't get too cluttered."
"There's a black rectangle there in the Richter Range," she said. "See? Over in the east?"
"A black rectangle indicates hibernation grounds," Klaus said. "There must be quite a few bears in the Mortmain Mountains. Look, there are five hibernation grounds near Silent Springs, and a large cluster of them at the top of Paucity Peak."
"And here," Violet said, "in the Valley of Four Drafts, where it looks like Madame Lulu spilled coffee."
"Valley of Four Drafts!" Klaus said.
"V.F.D.!" Sunny cried.
The Baudelaires peered together at the spot on the map. The Valley of Four Drafts was high up in the Mortmain Mountains, where it would be very cold. The Stricken Stream began there, and wound its way down to the sea in sagging curves through the hinterlands, and the map showed many, many hibernation grounds along the way. There was a small brown stain in the center of the valley, where four gaps in the mountains came together and where Lulu had probably spilled coffee, but there were no markings for a headquarters or for anything else.
"Do you think it means something?" Violet asked. "Or is it just a coincidence, like all the V.F.D.s we've come across?"
"I thought the V in V.F.D. stood for 'volunteer,'" Klaus said. "That's what we found written on a page of the Quagmire notebooks, and it's what Jacques Snicket said."
"Winnow?" Sunny asked, which meant "But where else could the headquarters be? There's no other marking on the map."