A Series of Unfortunate Events Box: The Complete Wreck by Lemony Snicket
But your imaginings would be ersatz, as all imaginings are. They are as untrue as the ersatz auctioneer who found the Baudelaires at the Squalors’ penthouse, and the ersatz elevator outside their front door and the ersatz guardian who pushed them down the deep pit of the elevator shaft. Esmé hid her evil plan behind her reputation as the city’s sixth most important financial advisor, and Count Olaf hid his identity behind a monocle and some black boots, and the dark passageway hid its secrets behind a pair of sliding elevator doors, but as much as it pains me to tell you that the Baudelaire orphans stood on the steps of Veblen Hall, weeping with anguish and frustration as Count Olaf rode away with the Quagmire triplets, I cannot hide the unfortunate truths of the Baudelaires’ lives behind an ersatz happy ending.
The Baudelaire orphans stood on the steps of Veblen Hall, weeping with anguish and frustration as Count Olaf rode away with the Quagmire triplets, and the sight of Mr. Poe emerging from the award-winning door, with a doily in his hair and a look of panic in his eye, only made them weep harder.
“I’ll call the police,” Mr. Poe said, “and they’ll capture Count Olaf in no time at all,” but the Baudelaires knew that this statement was as ersatz as Gunther’s improper English. They knew that Olaf was far too clever to be captured by the police, and I’m sorry to say that by the time two detectives found the big black pickup truck, abandoned outside St. Carl’s Cathedral with the motor still running, Olaf had already transferred the Quagmires from the red herring to a shiny black instrument case, which he told the bus driver was a tuba he was bringing to his aunt. The three siblings watched Mr. Poe scurry back into Veblen Hall to ask members of the in crowd where he could find a phone booth, and they knew that the banker was not going to be of any help.
“I think Mr. Poe will be a great deal of help,” Jerome said, as he walked out of Veblen Hall and sat down on the steps to try to comfort the children. “He’s going to call the police, and give them a description of Olaf.”
“But Olaf is always in disguise,” Violet said miserably, wiping her eyes. “You never know what he’ll look like until you see him.”
“Well, I’m going to make sure you never see him again,” Jerome promised. “Esmé may have left—and I’m not going to argue with her—but I’m still your guardian, and I’m going to take you far, far away from here, so far away that you’ll forget all about Count Olaf and the Quagmires and everything else.”
“Forget about Olaf?” Klaus asked. “How can we forget about him? We’ll never forget his treachery, no matter where we live.”
“And we’ll never forget the Quagmires, either,” Violet said. “I don’t want to forget about them. We have to figure out where he’s taking our friends, and how to rescue them.”
“Tercul!” Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of “And we don’t want to forget about everything else, either—like the underground hallway that led to our ruined mansion, and the real meaning of V.F.D.!”
“My sister is right,” Klaus said. “We have to track down Olaf and learn all the secrets he’s keeping from us.”
“We’re not going to track down Olaf,” Jerome said, shuddering at the thought. “We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t track us down. As your guardian, I cannot allow you to try to find such a dangerous man. Wouldn’t you rather live safely with me?”
“Yes,” Violet admitted, “but our friends are in grave danger. We must go and rescue them.”
“Well, I don’t want to argue,” Jerome said. “If you’ve made up your mind, then you’ve made up your mind. I’ll tell Mr. Poe to find you another guardian.”
“You mean you won’t help us?” Klaus asked.
Jerome sighed, and kissed each Baudelaire on the forehead. “You children are very dear to me,” he said, “but I don’t have your courage. Your mother always said I wasn’t brave enough, and I guess she was right. Good luck, Baudelaires. I think you will need it.”
The children watched in amazement as Jerome walked away, not even looking back at the three orphans he was leaving behind. They found their eyes brimming with tears once more as they watched him disappear from sight. They would never see the Squalor penthouse again, or spend another night in their bedrooms, or spend even a moment in their oversized pinstripe suits. Though he was not as dastardly as Esmé or Count Olaf or the hook-handed man, Jerome was still an ersatz guardian, because a real guardian is supposed to provide a home, with a place to sleep and something to wear, and all Jerome had given them in the end was “Good luck.” Jerome reached the end of the block and turned left, and the Baudelaires were once again alone in the world.
Violet sighed, and stared down the street in the direction Olaf had escaped. “I hope my inventing skills don’t fail me,” she said, “because we’re going to need more than good luck to rescue the Quagmire triplets.”
Klaus sighed, and stared down the street in the direction of the ashy remains of their first home. “I hope my research skills don’t fail me,” he said, “because we’re going to need more than good luck to solve the mystery of the hallway and the Baudelaire mansion.”
Sunny sighed, and watched as a lone doily blew down the stairs. “Bite,” she said, and she meant that she hoped her teeth wouldn’t fail her, because they’d need more than good luck to discover what V.F.D. really stood for.
The Baudelaires looked at one another with faint smiles. They were smiling because they didn’t think Violet’s inventing skills would fail, any more than Klaus’s research skills would fail or Sunny’s teeth would fail. But the children also knew that they wouldn’t fail each other, as Jerome had failed them and as Mr. Poe was failing them now, as he dialed the wrong number and was talking to a Vietnamese restaurant instead of the police. No matter how many misfortunes had befallen them and no matter how many ersatz things they would encounter in the future, the Baudelaire orphans knew they could rely on each other for the rest of their lives, and this, at least, felt like the one thing in the world that was true.
To My Kind Editor
A Series of Unfortunate Events
THE BAD BEGINNING
THE REPTILE ROOM
THE WIDE WINDOW
THE MISERABLE MILL
THE AUSTERE ACADEMY
Credits
Cover art © 2001 Brett Helquist
Cover design by Alison Donalty
Cover ©2001 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Copyright
THE ERSATZ ELEVATOR
Text copyright © 2001 by Lemony Snicket
Illustrations copyright © 2001 by Brett Helquist.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub Edition August 2007 ISBN 9780061757181
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Snicket, Lemony.
The Ersatz Elevator/ by Lemony Snicket ; illustrations by Brett Helquist.
p. cm. — (A series of unfortunate events ; bk. 3)
ISBN 0-06-4408647— ISBN 0-06-028888-4 (lib. bdg.)
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
A Series of Unfortunate Events #7: The Vile Village
A Series of Unfortunate Events
BOOK the Seventh
THE VILE VILLAGE
by LEMONY SNICKET
Illustrations by Brett Helquist
Dear Reader,
You have undoubtedly picked up this book by mistake, so please put it down. Nobody in their right mind would read this particular book about the lives of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire on purpose, because each dismal moment of their stay in the v
I can think of no single reason why anyone would want to open a book containing such unpleasant matters as migrating crows, an angry mob, a newspaper headline, the arrest of innocent people, the Deluxe Cell, and some very strange hats.
It is my solemn and sacred occupation to research each detail of the Baudelaire children’s lives and write them all down, but you may prefer to do some other solemn and sacred thing, such as reading another book instead.
With all due respect,
Lemony Snicket
For Beatrice—
When we were together I felt breathless.
Now, you are.
CHAPTER
One
No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don’t read is often as important as what you do read. For instance, if you are walking in the mountains, and you don’t read the sign that says “Beware of Cliff” because you are busy reading a joke book instead, you may suddenly find yourself walking on air rather than on a sturdy bed of rocks. If you are baking a pie for your friends, and you read an article entitled “How to Build a Chair” instead of a cookbook, your pie will probably end up tasting like wood and nails instead of like crust and fruity filling. And if you insist on reading this book instead of something more cheerful, you will most certainly find yourself moaning in despair instead of wriggling in delight, so if you have any sense at all you will put this book down and pick up another one. I know of a book, for instance, called The Littlest Elf, which tells the story of a teensy-weensy little man who scurries around Fairyland having all sorts of adorable adventures, and you can see at once that you should probably read The Littlest Elf and wriggle over the lovely things that happened to this imaginary creature in a made-up place, instead of reading this book and moaning over the terrible things that happened to the three Baudelaire orphans in the village where I am now typing these very words. The misery, woe, and treachery contained in the pages of this book are so dreadful that it is important that you don’t read any more of it than you already have.
The Baudelaire orphans, at the time this story begins, were certainly wishing that they weren’t reading the newspaper that was in front of their eyes. A newspaper, as I’m sure you know, is a collection of supposedly true stories written down by writers who either saw them happen or talked to people who did. These writers are called journalists, and like telephone operators, butchers, ballerinas, and people who clean up after horses, journalists can sometimes make mistakes. This was certainly the case with the front page of the morning edition of The Daily Punctilio, which the Baudelaire children were reading in the office of Mr. Poe. “TWINS CAPTURED BY COUNT OMAR,” the headline read, and the three siblings looked at one another in amazement over the mistakes that The Daily Punctilio’s journalists had made.
“‘Duncan and Isadora Quagmire,’” Violet read out loud, “‘twin children who are the only known surviving members of the Quagmire family, have been kidnapped by the notorious Count Omar. Omar is wanted by the police for a variety of dreadful crimes, and is easily recognized by his one long eyebrow, and the tattoo of an eye on his left ankle. Omar has also kidnapped Esmé Squalor, the city’s sixth most important financial advisor, for reasons unknown.’ Ugh!” The word “Ugh!” was not in the newspaper, of course, but was something Violet uttered herself as a way of saying she was too disgusted to read any further. “If I invented something as sloppily as this newspaper writes its stories,” she said, “it would fall apart immediately.” Violet, who at fourteen was the eldest Baudelaire child, was an excellent inventor, and spent a great deal of time with her hair tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes as she thought of new mechanical devices.
“And if I read books as sloppily,” Klaus said, “I wouldn’t remember one single fact.” Klaus, the middle Baudelaire, had read more books than just about anyone his own age, which was almost thirteen. At many crucial moments, his sisters had relied on him to remember a helpful fact from a book he had read years before.
“Krechin!” Sunny said. Sunny, the youngest Baudelaire, was a baby scarcely larger than a watermelon. Like many infants, Sunny often said words that were difficult to understand, like “Krechin!” which meant something along the lines of “And if I used my four big teeth to bite something as sloppily, I wouldn’t even leave one toothmark!”
Violet moved the paper closer to one of the reading lamps Mr. Poe had in his office, and began to count the errors that had appeared in the few sentences she had read. “For one thing,” she said, “the Quagmires aren’t twins. They’re triplets. The fact that their brother perished in the fire that killed their parents doesn’t change their birth identity.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Klaus agreed. “And they were kidnapped by Count Olaf, not Omar. It’s difficult enough that Olaf is always in disguise, but now the newspaper has disguised his name, too.”
“Esmé!” Sunny added, and her siblings nodded. The youngest Baudelaire was talking about the part of the article that mentioned Esmé Squalor. Esmé and her husband, Jerome, had recently been the Baudelaires’ guardians, and the children had seen with their own eyes that Esmé had not been kidnapped by Count Olaf. Esmé had secretly helped Olaf with his evil scheme, and had escaped with him at the last minute.
“And ‘for reasons unknown’ is the biggest mistake of all,” Violet said glumly. “The reasons aren’t unknown. We know them. We know the reasons Esmé, Count Olaf, and all of Olaf’s associates have done so many terrible things. It’s because they’re terrible people.” Violet put down The Daily Punctilio, looked around Mr. Poe’s office, and joined her siblings in a sad, deep sigh. The Baudelaire orphans were sighing not only for the things they had read, but for the things they hadn’t read. The article had not mentioned that both the Quagmires and the Baudelaires had lost their parents in terrible fires, and that both sets of parents had left enormous fortunes behind, and that Count Olaf had cooked up all of his evil plans just to get ahold of these fortunes for himself. The newspaper had failed to note that the Quagmire triplets had been kidnapped while trying to help the Baudelaires escape from Count Olaf’s clutches, and that the Baudelaires had almost managed to rescue the Quagmires, only to find them snatched away once more. The journalists who wrote the story had not included the fact that Duncan Quagmire, who was a journalist himself, and Isadora Quagmire, who was a poet, each kept a notebook with them wherever they went, and that in their notebooks they had written down a terrible secret they had discovered about Count Olaf, but that all the Baudelaire orphans knew of this secret were the initials V.F.D., and that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny were always thinking of these three letters and what ghastly thing they could stand for. But most of all, the Baudelaire orphans had read no word about the fact that the Quagmire triplets were good friends of theirs, and that the three siblings were very worried about the Quagmires, and that every night when they tried to go to sleep, their heads were filled with terrible images of what could be happening to their friends, who were practically the only happy thing in the Baudelaires’ lives since they received the news of the fire that killed their parents and began the series of unfortunate events that seemed to follow them wherever they went. The article in The Daily Punctilio probably did not mention these details because the journalist who wrote the story did not know about them, or did not think they were important, but the Baudelaires knew about them, and the three children sat together for a few moments and thought quietly about these very, very important details.
A fit of coughing, coming from the doorway of the office, brought them out of their thoughts, and the Baudelaires turned to see Mr. Poe coughing into a white handkerchief. Mr. Poe was a banker who had been placed in charge of the orphans’ care after the fire, and I’m sorry to say that he was extremely prone to error, a phrase which here means “always had a cough, and had placed the three Baudelaire children in an assortment of dangerous positions.
“Good morning, children,” Mr. Poe said. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting, but ever since I was promoted to Vice President in Charge of Orphan Affairs I’ve been very, very busy. Besides, finding you a new home has been something of a chore.” He walked over to his desk, which was covered in piles of papers, and sat down in a large chair. “I’ve put calls in to a variety of distant relatives, but they’ve heard all about the terrible things that tend to happen wherever you go. Understandably, they’re too skittish about Count Olaf to agree to take care of you. ‘Skittish’ means ‘nervous,’ by the way. There’s one more—”
One of the three telephones on Mr. Poe’s desk interrupted him with a loud, ugly ring. “Excuse me,” the banker said to the children, and began to speak into the receiver. “Poe here. O.K. O.K. O.K. I thought so. O.K. O.K. Thank you, Mr. Fagin.” Mr. Poe hung up the phone and made a mark on one of the papers on his desk. “That was a nineteenth cousin of yours,” Mr. Poe said, “and a last hope of mine. I thought I could persuade him to take you in, just for a couple of months, but he refused. I can’t say I blame him. I’m concerned that your reputation as troublemakers is even ruining the reputation of my bank.”