The Vile Village

was not sure she could make an invention that could get the Baudelaires out of the uptown jail. But once her hair was out of her eyes, her inventing brain began to work at full force, and Violet took a good look around the cell for ideas. First she looked at the door of the cell, examining every inch of it.

'Do you think you could make another lockpick?' Klaus asked hopefully. 'You made an excellent one when we lived with Uncle Monty.'

'Not this time,' Violet replied. 'The door locks from the outside, so a lockpick would be of no use.' She closed her eyes for a moment in thought, and then looked up at the tiny barred window. Her siblings followed her gaze, a phrase which here means 'also looked at the window and tried to think of something helpful.'

'Boiklio?' Sunny asked, which meant 'Do you think you could make some more welding torches, to melt the bars? You made some excel lent ones when we lived with the Squalors.'

'Not this time,' Violet said. 'If I stood on the bench and Klaus stood on my shoulders and you stood on Klaus's shoulders, we could probably reach the window, but even if we melted the bars, the window isn't big enough to crawl through, even for Sunny.'

'Sunny could call out the window,' Klaus said, 'and try to attract the attention of someone to come and save us.'

'Thanks to mob psychology, every citizen of V.F.D. thinks that we're criminals,' Violet pointed out. 'No one is going to come rescue an accused murderer and her accomplices.' She closed her eyes and thought again, and then knelt down to get a closer look at the wooden bench.

'Rats,' she said.

Klaus jumped slightly. 'Where?' he said.

'I don't mean there are rats in the cell,' she said, hoping that she was speaking the truth. 'I just mean 'Rats!' I was hoping that the bench would be made of wooden boards held together with screws or nails. Screws and nails are always handy for inventions. But it's just a solid, carved niece of wood, which isn't handy at all.' Violet sat down on the solid, carved piece of wood and sighed. 'I don't know what I can do,' she admitted.

Klaus and Sunny looked at one another nervously. 'I'm sure you'll think of something,' Klaus said.

'Maybe you'll think of something,' Violet replied, looking at her brother. 'There must be something you've read that could help us.'

It was Klaus's turn to close his eyes in thought. 'If you tilted the bench,' he said, after a pause, 'it would become a ramp. The ancient Egyptians used ramps to build the pyramids.'

'But we're not trying to build a pyramid!' Violet cried in exasperation. 'We're trying to escape from jail!'

'I'm just trying to be helpful!' Klaus cried.

'If it weren't for you and your silly hair ribbons we wouldn't have been arrested in the first place!'

'And if it weren't for your ridiculous glasses,' Violet snapped in reply, 'we wouldn't be here in this jail!'

'Stop!' Sunny shrieked.

Violet and Klaus glared angrily at one another for a moment, and then sighed. Violet moved over on the bench to make room for her siblings.

'Come and sit down,' she said gloomily. 'I'm sorry I yelled at you, Klaus. Of course it's not your fault that we're here.'

'It's not yours, either,' Klaus said. 'I'm just frustrated. Only a few hours ago we thought we'd be able to find the Quagmires and save Jacques.'

'But we were too late to save Jacques,' Violet said, shuddering. 'I don't know who he was, or how he got his tattoo, but I know he wasn't Count Olaf.'

'Maybe he used to work with Count Olaf,' Klaus said. 'He said the tattoo was from his job. Do you think Jacques was in Olaf's theater troupe?'

'I don't think so,' Violet said. 'None of Olaf's associates have that same tattoo. If only Jacques were alive, he could solve the mystery.'

'Pereg,' Sunny said, which meant 'And if only the Quagmires were here, they could solve the other mystery — the meaning of the real V.F.D.'

'What we need,' Klaus said, 'is deus ex machina.'

'Who's that?' Violet said.

'It's not a who,' Klaus said, 'it's a what. 'Deus ex machina' is a Latin term that means 'the god from the machine.' It means the arrival of something helpful when you least expect it. We need to rescue two triplets from the clutches of a villain, and solve the sinister mystery surrounding us, but we're trapped in the filthiest cell of the uptown jail, and tomorrow afternoon we're supposed to be burned at the stake. It would be a wonderful time for something helpful to arrive unexpectedly.'

At that moment there was a knock on the door, and the sound of the lock unlatching. The heavy door of the Deluxe Cell creaked open and there stood Officer Luciana, scowling at them from beneath the visor of her helmet and holding a loaf of bread in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. 'If it were up to me, I wouldn't be doing this,' she said, 'but Rule #141 clearly states that all prisoners receive bread and water, so here you go.' The Chief of Police thrust the loaf and the pitcher into Violet's hands and slammed the door shut, locking it behind her. Violet stared at the loaf of bread, which looked spongy and unappetizing, and at the water pitcher, which was decorated with a painting of seven crows flying in a circle. 'Well, at least we have some nourishment,' she said. 'Our brains need food and water to work properly.'

She handed the pitcher to Sunny and the loaf to Klaus, who looked at the bread for a long, long time. Then, he turned to his sisters, who could see that his eyes were filling up with tears.

'I just remembered,' he said, in a quiet, sad voice. 'It's my birthday. I'm thirteen today.'

Violet put her hand on her brother's shoulder. 'Oh, Klaus,' she said. 'It is your birthday. We forgot all about it.'

'I forgot all about it myself, until this very moment,' Klaus said, looking back at the loaf of bread. 'Something about this bread made me remember my twelfth birthday, when our parents made that bread pudding.'

Violet put the pitcher of water down on the floor, and sat beside Klaus. 'I remember,' she said, smiling. 'That was the worst dessert we ever tasted.'

'Vom,' Sunny agreed.

'It was a new recipe that they were trying out,' Klaus said. 'They wanted it to be special for my birthday, but it was burned and sour and soggy. And they promised that the next year, for my thirteenth birthday, I'd have the best birthday meal in the world.' He looked at his siblings, and had to take his glasses off to wipe away his tears. 'I don't mean to sound spoiled,' he said, 'but I was hoping for a better birthday meal than bread and water in the Deluxe Cell of the uptown jail in the Village of Fowl Devotees.'

'Chift,' Sunny said, biting Klaus's hand gently.

Violet hugged him, and felt her own eyes fill up with tears as well. 'Sunny's right, Klaus. You don't sound spoiled.'

The Baudelaires sat together for a moment and cried quietly, entertaining the notion of how dreadful their lives had become in such a short time. Klaus's twelfth birthday did not seem like such a long time ago, and yet their memories of the lousy bread pudding seemed as faint and blurry as their first sight of V.F.D. on the horizon. It was a curious feeling, that something could be so close and so distant at the same time, and the children wept for their mother and their father and all of the happy things in their life that had been taken away from them since that terrible day at the beach.

Finally, the children cried themselves out, and Violet wiped her eyes and struggled to give her brother a smile. 'Klaus,' she said, 'Sunny and I are prepared to offer you the birthday gift of your choice. Anything at all that you want in the Deluxe Cell, you can have.'

'Thanks a lot,' Klaus said, smiling as he looked around the filthy room. 'What I'd really like is deus ex machina.'

'Me, too,' Violet agreed, and took the pitcher of water from her sister to drink from it. Before she even took a sip, however, she looked up, and stared at the far end of the cell. Putting down the pitcher, she quickly walked to the wall and rubbed some dirt away to see what the wall was made of. Then looked at her siblings and began to smile. 'Happy birthday, Klaus,' she said. 'Officer Luciana brought us deus ex machina.'

'She didn't bring us a god in a machine ' Klaus said. 'She brought water in a pitcher.'

'Brioche!' Sunny said, which meant 'And bread!'

'They're the closest thing to a god in a machine that we're going to get,' Violet said.