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Certain people have said that the world is like a
calm pond, and that anytime a person does even the
smallest thing, it is as if a stone has dropped into the
pond, spreading circles of ripples further and further
out, until the entire world has been changed by one tiny
action. If this is true, then the book you are reading
now is the perfect thing to drop into a pond. The
ripples will spread across the surface of the pond and
the world will change for the better, with one less
dreadful story for people to read and one more secret
hidden at the bottom of a pond, where most people never
think of looking. The miserable tale of the Baudelaire
orphans will be safe in the pond’s murky depths, and you
will be happier not to read the grim story I have
written, but instead to gaze at the rippling scum that
rises to the top of the world.
The Baudelaires themselves, as they rode in the back
of a taxi driven by a woman they scarcely knew, might
have been happy to jump into a pond themselves, had they
known what sort of story lay ahead of them as the
automobile made its way among the twisting streets of
the city where the orphans had once lived. Violet,
Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire gazed out of the windows of
the car, marveling at how little the city had changed
since a fire destroyed their home, took the lives of
their parents, and created ripples in the Baudelaires’
lives that would probably never become calm. As the taxi
turned a corner, Violet saw the market where she and her
siblings had shopped for ingredients to make dinner for
Count Olaf, the notorious villain who had become their
guardian after the fire. Even after all this time, with
Olaf trying scheme after scheme to get his hands on the
enormous fortune the Baudelaire parents had left behind,
the market looked the same as the day Justice Strauss, a
kindly neighbor and a judge in the High Court, had first
taken them there. Towering over the market was an
enormous, shiny building that Klaus recognized as 667
Dark Avenue, where the Baudelaires had spent some time
under the care of Jerome and Esmé Squalor in an enormous
penthouse apartment. It seemed to the middle Baudelaire
that the building had not changed one bit since the
siblings had first discovered Esmé’s treacherous and
romantic attachment to Count Olaf. And Sunny Baudelaire,
who was still small enough that her view out the window
was somewhat restricted, heard the rattle of a manhole
cover as the taxi drove over it, and remembered the
underground passageway she and her siblings had
discovered, which led from the basement of 667 Dark
Avenue to the ashen remains of their own home. Like the
market and the penthouse, the mystery of this passageway
had not changed, even though the Baudelaires had
discovered a secret organization known as V.F.D. that
the children believed had constructed many such
passageways. Each mystery the Baudelaires discovered
only revealed another mystery, and another, and another,
and several more, and another, as if the three siblings
were diving deeper and deeper into a pond, and all the
while the city lay calm on the surface, unaware of all
the unfortunate events in the orphans’ lives. Even now,
returning to the city that was once their home, the
Baudelaire orphans had solved few of the mysteries
overshadowing them. They didn’t know where they were
headed, for instance, and they scarcely knew anything
about the woman driving the automobile except her name.
“You must have thousands of questions, Baudelaires,”
said Kit Snicket, spinning the steering wheel with her
white-gloved hands. Violet, who had adroit technical
faculties—a phrase which here means “a knack for
inventing mechanical devices”—admired the automobile’s
purring machinery as the taxi made a sharp turn through
a large metal gate and proceeded down a curvy, narrow
street lined with shrubbery. “I wish we had more time to
talk, but it’s already Tuesday. As it is you scarcely
have time to eat your important brunch before getting
into your concierge disguises and beginning your
observations as flaneurs.”
“Concierge?” Violet asked.
“Flaneurs?” Klaus asked.
“Brunch?” Sunny asked.
Kit smiled, and maneuvered the taxi through another
sharp turn. Two books of poetry skittered off the
passenger seat to the floor of the automobile—The Walrus
and the Carpenter, and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll, and
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot. The Baudelaires had
recently received a message in code, and had used the
poetry of Mr. Carroll and Mr. Eliot in order to decode
the message and meet Kit Snicket on Briny Beach, and now
it seemed that perhaps Kit was still talking in riddles.
“A great man once said that right, temporarily defeated,
is stronger than evil triumphant. Do you understand what
that means?”
Violet and Sunny turned to their brother, who was the
literary expert in the family. Klaus Baudelaire had read
so many books he was practically a walking library, and
had recently taken to writing important and interesting
facts in a dark blue commonplace book. “I think so,” the
middle Baudelaire said. “He thinks that good people are
more powerful than evil people, even if evil people
appear to be winning. Is he a member of V.F.D.?”
“You might say that,” Kit said. “Certainly his
message applies to our current situation. As you know,
our organization split apart some time ago, with much
bitterness on both sides.”
“The schism,” Violet said.
“Yes,” Kit agreed with a sigh. “The schism. V.F.D.
was once a united group of volunteers, trying to
extinguish fires—both literally and figuratively. But
now there are two groups of bitter enemies. Some of us
continue to extinguish fires, but others have turned to
much less noble schemes.”
“Olaf,” Sunny said. The language skills of the
youngest Baudelaire were still developing, but everyone
in the taxi knew what Sunny meant when she uttered the
name of the notorious villain.
“Count Olaf is one of our enemies,” Kit agreed,
peering into her rearview mirror and frowning, “but
there are many, many more who are equally wicked, or
perhaps even more so. If I’m not mistaken, you met two
of them in the mountains—a man with a beard, but no
hair, and a woman with hair, but no beard. There are
plenty more, with all sorts of hairstyles and facial
ornaments. A long time ago, of course, you could spot
members of V.F.D. by the tattoos on their ankles. But
now there are so many wicked people it is impossible to
keep track of all our enemies—and all the while they are
keeping track of us. In fact, we may have some enemies
behind us at this very moment.”
The Baudelaires turned to look out of the rear
window, and saw another taxi driving behind them at
quite a distance. Like Kit Snicket’s automobile, the
windows of this taxi were tinted, and so the children
could not see anything through the darkened glass.
“Why do you think there are enemies in that taxi?”
Violet asked.
“A taxi will pick up anyone who signals for one,” Kit
said. “There are countless wicked people in the world,
so it follows that sooner or later a taxi will pick up a
wicked person.”
“Or a noble one,” Klaus pointed out. “Our parents
took a taxi to the opera one evening when their car
wouldn’t start.”
“I remember that evening well,” Kit replied with a
faint smile. “It was a performance of La Forza del
Destino. Your mother was wearing a red shawl, with long
feathers along the edges. During intermission I followed
them to the snack bar and slipped them a box of poison
darts before Esmé Squalor could catch me. It was
difficult, but as one of my comrades likes to say, ‘To
be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have
lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forgo even
ambition when the end is gained—who can say this is not
greatness?’ And speaking of greatness, please hold on.
We can’t allow a potential enemy to follow us to our
important brunch.”
When someone says that their head is spinning, they
are usually using an expression which means that they
are very confused. Certainly the Baudelaires had
occasion to use the expression in this way, after
listening to a person hurriedly summarizing the troubles
of a splintered secret organization and quoting various
historical figures on the subject of wickedness while
driving a taxi hurriedly toward some mysterious,
unexplained errands. But there are rare moments when the
expression “My head is spinning” refers to a time when
one’s head is actually spinning, and when Kit uttered
the word “brunch,” one of these moments arrived. The
steering wheel clasped firmly in her gloves, Kit turned
the taxi so sharply that it spun off the road. The
children’s heads—along with the rest of their
bodies—spun along with the automobile as it veered into
the dense, green shrubbery on the side of the road. When
the taxi hit the shrubbery it kept spinning, and for a
few seconds the siblings saw nothing but a green blur as
the car spun through the shrubbery, and heard nothing
but the crackle of branches as they scraped along the
sides of the car, and felt nothing but relief that they
had remembered to wear their seat belts, and then all of
a sudden the Baudelaire heads stopped spinning, and they
found themselves shaky but safe in a sloping lawn on the
other side of the shrubbery, where the taxi had come to
a stop. Kit turned off the engine and sighed deeply,
leaning her head against the steering wheel.
“I probably shouldn’t do that,” she said, “in my
condition.”
“Condition?” Sunny asked.
Kit lifted her head, and turned to fully face the
Baudelaires for the first time since they had entered
the car. She had a kind face, but there were lines of
worry across her brow, and it looked like she hadn’t
slept properly for quite some time. Her hair was long
and messy, and she had two pencils stuck into it at odd
angles. She was wearing a very elegant black coat,
buttoned up all the way to her chin, but tucked into the
lapel was a flower that had seen better days, a phrase
which here means “had lost most of its petals and wilted
considerably.” If the Baudelaires had been asked to
guess Kit’s condition, they would have said she looked
like a woman who had been through much hardship, and the
Baudelaires wondered if their own hardships were equally
clear in their faces and clothes. “I’m distraught,” Kit
said, using a word which here means “sad and upset.” She
opened the door of the taxi and sighed once more.
“That’s my condition. I’m distraught, and I’m pregnant.”
She unhooked her seat belt and stepped out of the
car, and the Baudelaires saw she had spoken the truth.
Beneath her coat, her belly had a slight but definite
curve, as happens when women are expecting children.
When a woman is in such a condition, it is best to avoid
strain, a word which here means “physical activity that
might endanger either the woman or her future
offspring.” Violet and Klaus could remember when their
mother was pregnant with Sunny, and spent her free time
lounging on the largest sofa in the Baudelaire library,
with their father fetching lemonade and pumpernickel
toast, or adjusting the pillows beneath her so she was
comfortable. Occasionally, he would play one of their
mother’s favorite pieces of music on the phonograph, and
she would rise from the sofa and dance awkwardly,
holding her growing belly and making funny faces at
Violet and Klaus as they watched from the doorway, but
for the most part the third Baudelaire pregnancy was
spent in quiet relaxation. The Baudelaires felt certain
their mother had never spun a taxicab through shrubbery
during her pregnancy, and were sorry that Kit Snicket’s
condition did not allow her to avoid the strain of such
activities.
“Gather all of your things, Baudelaires,” Kit said,
“and if you don’t mind, I’m going to ask you to carry my
things, too—just some books and papers in the front
seat. One should never leave any belongings in a taxi,
because you can never be sure if you’ll see them again.
Please be quick about it. Our enemies are likely to turn
their taxi around and find us.”
Kit turned away from the Baudelaires and began to
walk quickly down the sloping lawn, while the
Baudelaires looked at one another in bewilderment.
“When we arrived at Briny Beach,” Violet said, “and
saw the taxi waiting for us, just like the message said,
I thought we were finally going to find answers to all
of our questions. But I have more questions now than I
ever did.”
“Me too,” Klaus said. “What does Kit Snicket want
with us?”
“What did she mean by concierge disguises?” Violet
said.
“What did she mean by observations as flaneurs?”
Klaus asked.
“What’s so important about brunch?” Violet asked.
“How did she know we met those villains in the
mountains?” Klaus asked.
“Where is Quigley Quagmire?” Violet asked, referring
to a young man of whom the eldest Baudelaire was
particularly fond, who had sent the coded message to the
three children.
“Trust?” Sunny said quietly, and this was the most
important question of all. By “trust,” the youngest
Baudelaire meant something along the lines of, “Does Kit
Snicket seem like a reliable person, and should we
follow her?” and this is often a tricky question to ask
about someone. Deciding whether or not to trust a person
is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because
you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch,
or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this
reason many people choose to spend their time alone and
indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter. The
Baudelaires did not know very much about Kit Snicket,
and so it was difficult to know what their future would
be if they followed her down the sloping lawn toward the
mysterious errands she had mentioned.
“In the few minutes we’ve known her,” Violet said,
“Kit Snicket has driven a taxicab into a mass of
shrubbery. Normally I would be unwilling to trust such a
person, but . . .”
“The poster,” Klaus said, as his sister’s voice
trailed off. “I remember it, too. Mother said she
purchased it during intermission, as a souvenir. She
said it was the most interesting time she’d ever had at
the opera, and she never wanted to forget it.”
“The poster had a picture of a gun,” Violet
remembered, “with a trail of smoke forming the words of
the title.”
Sunny nodded her head. “La Forza del Destino,” she
said.
The three children gazed out at the sloping lawn. Kit
Snicket had already walked quite some distance, without
looking back to see if the children were following her.
Without another word, the siblings reached into the
passenger seat and gathered up Kit’s things—the two
books of poetry they had spotted earlier, and a
cardboard folder brimming with papers. Then they turned
and began walking across the lawn. From behind the
hedges came a faint sound, but the children could not
tell if it was a taxicab turning around, or just the
wind rustling in the shrubbery.
“La forza del destino” is an Italian phrase meaning
“the force of destiny,” and “destiny” is a word that
tends to cause arguments among the people who use it.
Some people think destiny is something you cannot
escape, such as death, or a cheesecake that has curdled,
both of which always turn up sooner or later. Other
people think destiny is a time in one’s life, such as
the moment one becomes an adult, or the instant it
becomes necessary to construct a hiding place out of
sofa cushions. And still other people think that destiny
is an invisible force, like gravity, or a fear of paper
cuts, that guides everyone throughout their lives,
whether they are embarking on a mysterious errand, doing
a treacherous deed, or deciding that a book they have
begun reading is too dreadful to finish. In the opera La
Forza del Destino, various characters argue, fall in
love, get married in secret, run away to monasteries, go
to war, announce that they will get revenge, engage in
duels, and drop a gun on the floor, where it goes off
accidentally and kills someone in an incident eerily
similar to one that happens in chapter nine of this very
book, and all the while they are trying to figure out if
any of these troubles are the result of destiny. They
wonder and wonder at all the perils in their lives, and
when the final curtain is brought down even the audience
cannot be sure what all these unfortunate events may
mean. The Baudelaire orphans did not know what perils
lay ahead of them, as they followed Kit Snicket down the
lawn, but they wondered—just as I wondered, on that
fateful evening long ago, as I hurried out of the opera
house before a certain woman could spot me—if it was the
force of destiny that was guiding their story, or
something even more mysterious, even more dangerous, and
even more unfortunate.
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