Series of Unfortunate Events: The Grim Grotto (11 page)

Chapter Twelve

The expression "the tables have turned" is not one the Baudelaire orphans had much occasion to use, as it refers to a situation that has suddenly been reversed, so that those who were previously in a powerless position could suddenly find themselves in a powerful one, and vice versa. For the Baudelaires, the tables had turned at Briny Beach, when they received news of the terrible fire, and Count Olaf suddenly became a powerful and terrifying figure in their lives. As time went on, the siblings waited and waited for the tables to turn back, so that Olaf might be defeated once and for all and they could find themselves free of the sinister and mysterious forces that threatened to engulf them, but the tables of the Baudelaires' lives seemed stuck, with the children always in a position of misery and sorrow while wickedness seemed to triumph all around them. But as Violet hurriedly opened the tin of wasabi she had been keeping in her pocket, and spooned the green, spicy mixture into Sunny's wheezing mouth, it seemed like the tables might turn after all. Sunny gasped when the wasabi hit her tongue, and the stalks and caps of the Medusoid Mycelium shivered, and seemed to shrink back from the powerful Japanese condiment. In moments, the fungus began to wither and fade away, and Sunny's wheezing faded into coughing, and her coughing faded into deep breaths as the youngest Baudelaire rallied, a word which here means "regained her strength, and ability to breathe." The youngest Baudelaire hung on tight to her siblings' hands, and her eyes filled with tears, but Violet and Klaus could see that the Medusoid Mycelium would not triumph over their sister. "It's working," Violet said. "Sunny's breathing is getting stronger. "Yes," Klaus said. "We've turned the tables on that ghastly fungus." "Water," Sunny said, and her brother stood up from the kitchen floor and quickly got his sister a glass of water. Weakly, the youngest Baudelaire sat up and drank deeply from the glass, and then hugged both her siblings as tightly as she could. "Thank you," she said. "Saved me." "You saved yourself," Violet pointed out. "We had the wasabi this whole time, but we didn't think of giving it to you until you told us." Sunny coughed again, and lay back down on the floor. "Tuckered," she murmured. "I'm not surprised you're exhausted," Violet said. "You've been through quite an ordeal. Shall we carry you to the barracks so you can rest?" "Rest here," Sunny said, curling up at the foot of the stove. "Will you really be comfortable on the kitchen floor?" Klaus asked. Sunny opened one exhausted eye and smiled at her siblings. "Near you," she said. "All right, Sunny," Violet said, grabbing a dish towel from the kitchen counter, and folding it into a pillow for her sister. "We'll be in the Main Hall if you need us." "What next?" she murmured. "Shh," Klaus said, putting another dish towel on top of her. "Don't worry, Sunny. We'll figure out what to do next." The Baudelaires tiptoed out of the kitchen, carrying the tin of wasabi. "Do you think she'll be all right?" Violet asked. "I'm sure she will," Klaus said. "After a nap she'll be as good as new. But we should eat some of that wasabi ourselves. When we opened the diving helmet, we were exposed to the Medusoid Mycelium, and we'll need all of our strength to get away from Olaf." Violet nodded, and put a spoonful of wasabi into her mouth, shuddering violently as the condiment hit her tongue. "There's one last spoonful," Violet said, handing the tin to her brother. "We'd better make sure that diving helmet stays closed until we get our hands on some horseradish and destroy that fungus for good." Klaus nodded in agreement, closed his eyes, and ate the last of the Japanese condiment. "If we ever invent that food code we talked about with Fiona," he said, "the word 'wasabi' should mean 'powerful.' No wonder this cured our sister." "But now that we've cured her," Violet said, remembering Sunny's question as she fell asleep, "what next?" "Olaf is next," Klaus said firmly. "He said he has everything he needs to defeat V.F.D. forever, except the sugar bowl." "You're right," Violet said. "We have to turn the tables on him, and find it before he does." "But we don't know where it is," Klaus said. "Someone must have taken it from the Gorgonian Grotto." "I wonder..." Violet said, but she never said what she wondered, because a strange noise interrupted her. The noise was a sort of whir, followed by a sort of beep, followed by all sorts of noises, and they seemed to be coming from deep within the machinery of the Queequeg. Finally, a green light lit up on a panel in the wall, and a flat, white object began to slither out of a tiny slit in the panel. "It's paper," Klaus said. "It's more than paper," Violet said, and walked over to the panel. The sheet of paper curled into her hand as it emerged from the slit, as if the machine were impatient for the eldest Baudelaire to read it. "This is the telegram device. We must be receiving..." "A Volunteer Factual Dispatch," Klaus finished. Violet nodded, and scanned the paper quickly. Sure enough, the words "Volunteer Factual Dispatch " were printed on the top, and as more and more of the paper appeared, the eldest Baudelaire saw that it was addressed "To the Queequeg," with the date printed below, as well as the name of the person who was sending the telegram, miles and miles away on dry land. It was a name Violet almost dared not say out loud, even though she had felt as if she had been whispering it to herself for days, ever since the icy waters of the Stricken Stream had carried away a young man who meant very much to her. "It's from Quigley Quagmire," she said quietly. Klaus's eyes widened in astonishment. "What does he say?" he asked. Violet smiled as the telegram finished printing, her finger touching the Q in her friend's name. It was almost as if knowing that Quigley was alive was enough of a message. " 'It is my understanding that you have three additional volunteers on board STOP,' " she read, remembering that "STOP" indicates the end of a sentence in a telegram. " 'We are in desperate need of their services for a most urgent matter STOP. Please deliver them Tuesday to the location indicated in the rhymes below STOP.' " She scanned the paper and frowned thoughtfully. "Then there are two poems," she said. "One by Lewis Carroll and the other by T. S. Eliot." Klaus took his commonplace book out of his pocket, and flipped pages until he found what he was looking for. "Verse Fluctuation Declaration," he said. "That's the code we learned in the grotto. Quigley must have changed sonic of the words in the poems, so no one else would know where we're supposed to meet him. Let's see if we can recognize the changes." Violet nodded, and read the first poem out loud: " 'O Oysters, come and walk with us!' The Walrus did beseech. 'A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the movie theater.' "That last part sounds wrong," Violet said. "There were no movie theaters when Lewis Carroll was alive," Klaus said. "But what are the real words to the poem?" "I don't know," Violet said. "I've always found Lewis Carroll too whimsical for my taste." "I like him," Klaus said, "but I haven't memorized his poems. Read the other one. Maybe that will help." Violet nodded, and read aloud: "At the pink hour when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a pony throbbing party." The voice of the eldest Baudelaire trailed off, and she looked at her brother in confusion. "That's all," she said. "The poem stops there." Klaus frowned. "There's nothing else in the telegram?" "Only a few letters at the very bottom," she said. " 'CC: J.S.' What does that mean?" " 'CC' means that Quigley sent a copy of this message to someone else," Klaus said, "and 'J.S.' are the initials of the person." "Those mysterious initials again," Violet said. "It can't be Jacques Snicket, because he's dead. But who else could it be?" "We can't worry about that now," Klaus said. "We have to figure out what words have been substituted in these poems." "How can we do that?" Violet asked. "I don't know," Klaus said. "Why would Quigley think we would have memorized these poems?" "He wouldn't think that," Violet said. "He knows us. But the telegram was addressed to the Queequeg. He knew that someone on board could decode the poetry." "But who?" Klaus asked. "Not Fiona, she's a mycologist. An optimist like Phil isn't likely to be familiar with T. S. Eliot. And it's hard to imagine Captain Widdershins having a serious interest in poetry." "Not anymore," Violet said thoughtfully. "But Fiona's brother said he and the captain used to study poetry together." "That's true," Klaus said. "He said they used to read to one another in the Main Hall." He walked over to the sideboard and opened the cabinet, peering at the books Fiona kept inside. "But there's no poetry here, just Fiona's mycological library." "Captain Widdershins wouldn't keep poetry books out front like that," Violet said. "He would have kept them secret." "Just like he kept the secret of what happened to Fiona's brother," Klaus said. "He thought there were secrets too terrible for young people to know," Violet said, "but now we need to know them." Klaus was silent for a moment, and then turned to his sister. "There's something I never told you," he said. "Remember when our parents were so angry over the spoiled atlas?" "We talked about that in the grotto," Violet said. "The rain spoiled it when we left the library window open." "I don't think that's the only reason they were mad," Klaus said. "I took that atlas down from the top shelf, one I could only reach by putting the stepladder on top of the chair. They didn't think I could reach that shelf." "Why would that make them angry?" Violet asked. Klaus looked down. "That's where they kept books they didn't want us to find," he said. "I was interested in the atlas, but when I removed it from the shelf there was a whole row of other books.""What kind of books?" Violet asked. "I didn't get a good look at them," Klaus said. "There were a few books about war, and I think a few romances. I was too interested in the atlas to investigate any further, but I remember thinking it was strange that our parents had hidden those books. That's why they were so angry, I think, when they saw the atlas on the window seat, they knew I'd discovered their secret." "Did you ever look at them again?" Violet said. "I didn't have a chance," Klaus said. "They moved them to another hiding place, and I never saw them again." "Maybe our parents were going to tell us what was in those books when we were older," Violet said. "Maybe," Klaus agreed. "But we'll never know. We lost them in the fire." The elder Baudelaires sat quietly for a moment, looking at the cabinet in the sideboard, and then, without a word, the two siblings stepped onto the wooden table so they could open the highest cabinet. Inside was a small stack of books on such dull topics as child rearing, proper and improper diets, and the water cycle, but when the children pushed these books aside they saw what they had been looking for. "Elizabeth Bishop," Violet said, "Charles Simic, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Franz Wright, Daphne Gottlieb, there's all sorts of poetry here." "Why don't you read T.S. Eliot," Klaus suggested, handing her a thick, dusty volume, "and I'll tackle Lewis Carroll. If we read quickly we should be able to find the real poems and decode the message." "I found something else," Violet said, handing her brother a crumpled square of paper. "Look." Klaus looked at what his sister had given him. It was a photograph, blurred and faded with four people, grouped together like a family. In the center of the photograph was a large man with a long mustache that was curved at the end like a pair of parentheses, Captain Widdershins, of course, although he looked much younger and a great deal happier than the children had ever seen him. He was laughing, and his arm was around someone the two Baudelaires recognized as the hook-handed man, although he was not hook-handed in the photograph, both of his hands were perfectly intact, one resting on the captain's shoulder, and the other pointing at whoever was taking the picture and he was young enough to still be called a teenager, instead of a man. On the other side of the captain was a woman who was laughing as hard as the captain, and in her arms was a young infant with a tiny set of triangular glasses. "That must be Fiona's mother," Klaus said, pointing at the laughing woman. "Look," Violet said, pointing to the wall behind the family. "This was taken on board the Queequeg. That's the edge of the plaque with the captain's personal philosophy, 'He who hesitates is lost.' " "The whole family is lost, almost," Klaus said quietly. "Fiona's mother is dead. Her brother joined Count Olaf's troupe. And who knows where her stepfather is?" He put down the photograph, opened his commonplace book, and flipped to the beginning, where he had pasted another photograph taken long ago. This photograph also had four people in it, although one of the people was facing away from the camera, so it was impossible to tell who it was. The second person was Jacques Snicket, who of course was long dead. And the other two people were the Baudelaire parents. Klaus had kept this photograph ever since the children found it at Heimlich Hospital, and had looked at it every day, gazing into his parents' faces and reading the one sentence, over and over, that had been typed below it. "Because of the evidence discussed on page nine," the sentence read, "experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown." For quite some time, the Baudelaires had thought this meant one of their parents was alive after all, but now they were almost certain it meant no such thing. Violet and Klaus looked from one photograph to the other, imagining a time when no one in the pictures was lost, and everyone was happy. Klaus sighed, and looked at his sister. "Maybe we shouldn't be hesitating here," Klaus said. "Maybe we should be rescuing our captain, instead of reading books of poetry and looking at old photographs. I don't want to lose Fiona." "Fiona's safe with her brother," Violet said, "and I'm sure she'll join us when she can. We need to decode this message, or we might lose everything. In this case, he or she who doesn't hesitate is lost." "What if we decode the message before Fiona arrives?" Klaus asked. "Do we wait for her to join us?" "We wouldn't have to," Violet said. "The three of us could properly operate this submarine by ourselves. All we'd need to do is repair the porthole, and we could probably steer the Queequeg out of the Carmelita." "We can't abandon her here," Klaus said. "She wouldn't abandon us." "Are you sure?"
violet asked. Klaus sighed, and looked at the photograph again. "No," he said. "Let's get to work." Violet nodded in agreement, and the two Baudelaires shelved the discussion, a phrase which here means "temporarily stopped their conversation" and unshelved the poetry books in order to get to work on decoding Quigley's Verse Fluctuation Declarations. It had been some time since the Baudelaires had been able to read in a comfortable place, and the children were pleased to find themselves silently flipping pages, searching for certain words, and even taking a few notes. Reading poetry, even if you are only reading to find a secret message hidden within its words, can often give one a feeling of power, the way you can feel powerful if you are the only one who brought an umbrella on a rainy day, or the only one who knows how to untie knots when you're taken hostage. With each poem the children felt more and more powerful or, as they might have said in their food code, more and more wasabi and by the time the two volunteers were interrupted they felt as if the tables just might be continuing to turn. "Snack!" announced a cheerful voice below them, and Violet and Klaus were pleased to see their sister emerging from the kitchen carrying a small plate. "Sunny!" Violet cried. "We thought you were asleep." "Rekoop," the youngest Baudelaire said, which meant something along the lines of, "I had a brief nap, and when I woke up I felt well enough to cook something." "I am a bit hungry," Klaus admitted. "What did you make us?" "Amuse bouche," Sunny said, which meant something like, "Tiny water chestnut sandwiches, with a spread of cheese and sesame seeds." "They're quite tasty," Violet said, and the three children shared the plate of amuse bouche as the elder Baudelaires brought Sunny up to speed, a phrase which here means "told their sister what had happened while she was suffering inside the diving helmet." They told her about the terrible villain they encountered inside. They described the hideous circumstances in which the Snow Scouts found themselves, and the hideous clothing worn by Esme Squalor and Carmelita Spats. They told her about the Volunteer Factual Dispatch, and the Verse Fluctuation Declarations they were trying to decode. And, finally, they told her about the hook-handed man being Fiona's long-lost brother, and the possibility that he might join them aboard the Queequeg. "Perifido," Sunny said, which meant "It would be foolish to trust one of Olaf's henchmen." "We don't trust him," Klaus said. "Not really. But Fiona trusts him, and we trust Fiona." "Volatile," Sunny said. "Yes," Violet admitted, "but we don't have much choice. We're in the middle of the ocean..." "And we need to get to the beach," Klaus said, and held up the book of Lewis Carroll's poetry. "I think I've solved part of the Verse Fluctuation Declaration. Lewis Carroll has a poem called 'The Walrus and the Carpenter.' " "There was something about a walrus in the telegram," Violet said. "Yes," Klaus said. "It took me a while to find the specific stanza, but here it is. Quigley wrote: 'O Oysters, come and walk with us!' The Walrus did beseech. 'A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the movie theater.' " "Yes," Violet said. "But what does the actual poem say?" Klaus read, "'O Oysters, come and walk with us!' The Walrus did beseech. 'A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the briny beach.' " Klaus closed the book and looked up at his sisters. "Quigley wants us to meet him tomorrow," he said, "at Briny Beach." "Briny Beach," Violet repeated quietly. The eldest Baudelaire did not have to remind her siblings, of course, of the last time they were at Briny Beach, learning from Mr. Poe that the tables of their lives had turned. The three siblings sat and thought of that terrible day, which felt as blurred and faded as the photograph of Fiona's family or the photograph of their own parents, pasted into Klaus's commonplace book. Returning to Briny Beach after all this time felt to the Baudelaires like an enormous step backward, as if they would lose their parents and their home again, and Mr. Poe would take them once more to Count Olaf's house, and all the unfortunate events would crash over them once more, like the waves of the ocean crashing on the tidepools of Briny Beach and the tiny, passive creatures who lived inside them. "How would we get there?" Klaus asked. "In the Queequeg," Violet said. "This submarine should have a location device, and once we know where we are, I think I could set a course for Briny Beach." "Distance?" Sunny asked. "It shouldn't be far," Klaus said. "I'd have to check the charts. But what would we do when we got there?" "I think I have the answer to that," Violet said, turning to her book of T. S. Eliot poems. "Quigley used lines from a very long poem in this book called The Waste Land." "I tried to read that," Klaus said, "but I found T. S. Eliot too opaque. I scarcely understood a word." "Maybe it's all in code," Violet said. "Listen to this. Quigley wrote: 'At the pink hour when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a pony throbbing party.' "But the real poem reads: "At the violet hour when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a..." "Blah blah blah ha ha ha!" interrupted a cruel, mocking voice. "Ha blah ha blah ha blah! Tee hee snaggle sniggle tee hee hee! Hubba hubba giggle diddle denouement!" The Baudelaires looked up from their books to face Count Olaf, who was already stepping through the porthole and onto the wooden table. Behind him was Esme Squalor, sneering beneath the hood of her octopus outfit, and the children could hear the unpleasant slapping footsteps of the horrid pink shoes of Carmelita Spats, who peeked her heart-decorated face into the submarine and giggled nastily. "I'm happier than a pig eating bacon!" Count Olaf cried. "I'm tickled pinker than a sunburned Caucasian! I'm in higher spirits than a brand-new graveyard! I'm so happy-go-lucky that lucky and happy people are going to heat me with sticks out of pure, unbridled jealousy! Ha ha jicama! When I stopped by the brig to see how my associate was progressing, and found that you orphans had flown the coop, I was afraid you were escaping, or sabotaging my submarine, or even sending a telegram asking for help! But I should have known you were too dim-witted to do anything useful! Look at yourselves, orphans, snacking and reading poetry, while the powerful and good-looking people of the world cackle in triumph! Cackle cackle cutthroat!" "In just a few minutes," Esme bragged, "we will arrive at the Hotel Denouement, thanks to our bratty rowing crew. Tee hee triumphant! V.F.D.'s last safe place will soon be in ashes, just like your home, Baudelaires!" "I'm going to do a special tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian dance recital," Carmelita bragged, "on the graves of all those volunteers!" Carmelita leaped through the porthole, her pink tutu fluttering as if it were trying to escape, and joined Olaf on the table to begin a dance of triumph. "C is for 'cute!', " Carmelita sang, "A is for 'adorable'! R is for 'ravishing'! M is for 'gor...' " "Now, now, Carmelita," Count Olaf said, giving the tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian a tense smile. "Why don't you save your dance recital for later? I'll buy you all the dance costumes in the world. With V.F.D. out of the way, all the fortunes of the world can be mine, the Baudelaire fortune, the Quagmire fortune, the Widdershins fortune, the..." "Where is Fiona?" Klaus asked, interrupting the villain. "What have you done with her? If you've hurt her..." "Hurt her?" Count Olaf asked, his eyes shining bright beneath his one scraggly eyebrow. "Hurt Triangle Eyes? Why would I hurt a clever girl like that? Tee hee troupe member!" With one of his tiresome dramatic gestures, Count Olaf pointed behind him, and Esme clapped the tentacles of her outfit as two people appeared in the porthole. One was the hook-handed man, who looked as wicked as he ever had. And the other was Fiona, who looked slightly different. One difference was the expression on her face, which looked resigned, a word which here means "as if the mycologist had given up entirely on defeating Count Olaf." But the other difference was printed on the slippery-looking uniform she was wearing, right in the center. "No," Klaus said quietly, as he stared at his friend. "No," Violet said firmly, and looked at Klaus. "No!" Sunny said angrily, and bared her teeth as Fiona stepped through the porthole and stood beside Count Olaf on the wooden table. Her boot brushed against the poetry books Violet and Klaus had taken from the sideboard, including books by Lewis Carroll and T. S. Eliot. There are some who say that the poetry of Lewis Carroll is too whimsical, a word which here means "full of comic nonsense," and other people complain that T. S. Eliot's poetry is too opaque, which refers to something that is unnecessarily complicated. But while everyone may not agree on the poets represented on the wooden table, every noble reader in the world agrees that the poet represented on Fiona's uniform was a writer of limited skill, who wrote awkward, tedious poetry on hopelessly sentimental topics. "Yes," Fiona said quietly, and the Baudelaire orphans looked up at the portrait of Edgar Guest, smiling on the front of her uniform, and felt the tables turn once more.