"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 news
paper!"
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.
Chapter Seven
"What are you doing here, please?" Madame Lulu snarled. She strode quickly toward them, her own eyes glaring as angrily as the eye she was wearing around her neck. "What are the freaks doing in the tent, please, and what are the freaks doing under the table, please, and please answer me this instant, please, or you will be very, very sorry, please, thank you!"
The Baudelaire orphans looked up at the fake fortune-teller, and a strange thing happened. Rather than quaking with fear, or crying out in horror, or huddling together as Lulu shrieked at them, the three children stood resolute, a phrase which here means "did not become frightened at all." Now that they knew that Madame Lulu used a machine on her ceiling and an archival library under her table to disguise herself as a magical and mysterious person, it was as if every frightening thing about her had melted away, and she was just a woman with an odd accent and a bad temper who had crucial information the Baudelaires needed. As Madame Lulu carried on, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny watched her without a terrified thought in their heads. Madame Lulu yelled and yelled, but the children felt just as angry at Lulu as Lulu was at them.
"How dare you, please, enter the tent without permission of Madame Lulu!" Madame Lulu cried. "I am the boss of Caligari Carnival, please, and you must obey me every single moment of your freakish lives! Please, I have never seen, please, the freaks who are so ungrateful to Madame Lulu! You are in the worst of the trouble, please!" By now, Lulu had reached the table, and saw the pile of broken glass which sparkled all over the floor. "You are the breakers of the crystal ball!" she bellowed, pointing a dirty fingernail at the Baudelaires. "You should be ashamed of your freaky selves! The crystal ball is the very valuable thing, please, and is having of the magical powers!"
"Fraud!" Sunny cried.
"That crystal ball wasn't magical!" Violet translated angrily. "It was plain glass! And you're not a real fortune-teller, either! We analyzed your lightning device, and we found your archival library."
"This is all one big disguise," Klaus said, gesturing around the tent. "You're the one who should be ashamed of yourself."
"Ple–" Madame Lulu said, but she shut her mouth before she could finish the word. She looked down at the Baudelaires, and her eyes grew very wide. Then she sat down in a chair, lay her head down next to the crystal ball, and began to cry. "I am ashamed of myself," she said, in an unaccented voice, and reached up to her turban. With a flick of her wrist, she unraveled the turban, and her long, blond hair fell down around her tearstained face. "I am utterly ashamed of myself," she said, through her tears, and her shoulders shook with sobs.
The Baudelaires looked at one another and then at the quaking woman sitting near them. It is hard for decent people to stay angry at someone who has burst into tears, which is why it is often a good idea to burst into tears if a decent person is yelling at you. The three children watched as Madame Lulu cried and cried, pausing only to wipe her eyes with her sleeves, and they could not help but feel a little bit sad, too, even as their anger continued.
"Madame Lulu," Violet said firmly, although not as firmly as sh
e would have liked, "why did you–"
"Oh," Madame Lulu cried, at the sound of her name, "don't call me that." She reached up to her neck and yanked on the cord that held the eye around her neck. It broke with a snap! and she dropped it to the ground where it lay amid the pieces of shattered glass while she went on sobbing. "My name is Olivia," she said finally, with a shuddering sigh. "I'm not Madame Lulu and I'm not a fortune-teller."
"But why are you pretending to be these things?" Klaus asked. "Why are you wearing a disguise? Why are you helping Count Olaf?"
"I try to help everyone," Olivia said sadly. "My motto is 'give people what they want.' That's why I'm here at the carnival. I pretend to be a fortune-teller, and tell people whatever it is they want to hear. If Count Olaf or one of his henchmen steps inside and asks me where the Baudelaires are, I tell them. If Jacques Snicket or another volunteer steps inside and asks me if his brother is alive, I tell them."
The Baudelaires felt so many questions tripping up inside them that they could scarcely decide which one to ask. "But where do you learn the answers?" Violet asked, pointing to the piles of paper underneath the table. "Where does all this information come from?"
"Libraries, mostly," Olivia said, wiping her eyes. "If you want people to think you're a fortune-teller, you have to answer their questions, and the answer to nearly every question is written down someplace. It just might take a while to find. It's taken me a long time to gather my archival library, and I still don't have all of the answers I've been looking for. So sometimes, when someone asks me a question and I don't know the answer, I just make something up."
"When you told Count Olaf that one of our parents was alive," Klaus asked, "were you making it up, or did you know the answer?"
Olivia frowned. "Count Olaf didn't ask anything about the parents of any carnival frea– wait a minute. Your voices sound different. Beverly, you have a ribbon in your hair, and your other head is wearing glasses. What's going on?"
The three children looked at one another in surprise. They had been so interested in what Olivia was saying that they had completely forgotten about their disguises, but now it appeared that disguises might not be necessary. The siblings needed to have their questions answered honestly, and it seemed more likely that Olivia would give them honest answers if the children were honest themselves. Without speaking, the Baudelaires stood up and removed their disguises. Violet and Klaus unbuttoned the shirt they were sharing, stretching the arms they had been keeping cooped up, and then stepped out of the fur-cuffed pants, while Sunny unwrapped the beard from around her. In no time at all the Baudelaires were standing in the tent in their regular clothing–except for Violet, who was still wearing a hospital gown from her stay in the Surgical Ward–with their disguises on the floor in a heap. The older Baudelaires even shook their heads vigorously, a word which here means "in order to shake talcum powder out of their hair," and rubbed at their faces so their disguised scars would disappear.
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