Mr. Poe took the newspaper from the children and looked at it carefully. 'Well, I'm sure the story in
'But the story is full of mistakes,' Violet said. 'The authorities won't even know his real name. The newspaper calls him Omar.'
'The story was a disappointment to me, too,' Mr. Poe said. 'The journalist said that the paper would put a photograph of me next to the article, with a caption about my promotion. I had my hair cut for it especially. It would have made my wife and sons very proud to see my name in the papers, so I understand why you're disappointed that the article is about the Quagmire twins, instead of being about you.'
'We don't care about having our names in the papers,' Klaus said, 'and besides, the Quagmires are triplets, not twins.'
'The death of their brother changes their birth identity,' Mr. Poe explained sternly, 'but I don't have time to talk about this. We need to find — '
Another one of his phones rang, and Mr. Poe excused himself again. 'Poe here,' he said into the receiver. 'No. No. No. Yes. Yes. Yes. I don't care. Good-bye.' He hung up the phone and coughed into his white handkerchief before wiping his mouth and turning once more to the children. 'Well, that phone call solved all of your problems,' he said simply.
The Baudelaires looked at one another. Had Count Olaf been arrested? Had the Quagmires been saved? Had someone invented a way to go back in time and rescue their parents from the terrible fire? How could all of their problems have been solved with one phone call to a banker?
'Plinn?' Sunny asked.
Mr. Poe smiled. 'Have you ever heard the aphorism,' he said, ''It takes a village to raise a child'?'
The children looked at one another again, a little less hopefully this time. The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen. An aphorism is merely a small group of words arranged in a certain order because they sound good that way, but oftentimes people tend to say them as if they were saying something very mysterious and wise.
'I know it probably sounds mysterious to you,' Mr. Poe continued, 'but the aphorism is actually very wise. 'It takes a village to raise a child' means that the responsibility for taking care of youngsters belongs to everyone in the community.'
'I think I read something about this aphorism in a book about the Mbuti pygmies,' Klaus said. 'Are you sending us to live in Africa?'
'Don't be silly,' Mr. Poe said, as if the millions of people who lived in Africa were all ridiculous. 'That was the city government on the telephone. A number of villages just outside the city have signed up for a new guardian program based on the aphorism 'It takes a village to raise a child.' Orphans are sent to these villages, and everyone who lives there raises them together. Normally, I approve of more traditional family structures, but this is really quite convenient, and your parents' will instructs that you be raised in the most convenient way possible.'
'Do you mean that the entire town would be in charge of us?' Violet asked. 'That's a lot of people.'
'Well, I imagine they would take turns,' Mr. Poe said, stroking his chin. 'It's not as if you would be tucked into bed by three thousand people at once.'
'Snoita!' Sunny shrieked. She meant something like 'I prefer to be tucked into bed by my siblings, not by strangers!' but Mr. Poe was busy looking through his papers on his desk and didn't answer her.
'Apparently I was mailed a brochure about this program several weeks ago,' he said, 'but I guess it got lost somewhere on my desk. Oh, here it is. Take a look for yourselves.'
Mr. Poe reached across his desk to hand them a colorful brochure, and the Baudelaire orphans took a look for themselves. On the front was the aphorism 'It takes a village to raise a child' written in flowery letters, and inside the brochure were photographs of children with such huge smiles that the Baudelaires' mouths ached just to look at them. A few paragraphs explained that 99 percent of the orphans participating in this program were overjoyed to have whole villages taking care of them, and that all the towns listed on the back page were eager to serve as guardians for any interested children who had lost their parents. The three Baudelaires looked at the grinning photographs and read the flowery aphorism and felt a little flutter in their stomachs. They felt more than a little nervous about having a whole town for a guardian. It was strange enough when they were in the care of various relatives. How strange would it feel if hundreds of people were trying to act as substitute Baudelaires?
'Do you think we would be safe from Count Olaf,' Violet asked hesitantly, 'if we lived with an entire village?'
'I should think so,' Mr. Poe said, and coughed into his handkerchief. 'With a whole village looking after you, you'll probably be the safest you've ever been. Plus, thanks to the story in
'0laf,' Klaus corrected.
'Yes, yes,' Mr. Poe said. 'I meant to say 'Omar.' Now, what villages are listed in the brochure? You children can choose your new hometown, if you like.'
Klaus turned the brochure over and read from the list of towns. 'Paltryville,' he said. 'That's where the Lucky Smells Lumbermill was. We had a terrible time there.'
'Calten!' Sunny cried, which meant something like 'I wouldn't return there for all the tea in China!'
'The next village on the list is Tedia,' Klaus said. 'That name is familiar to me.'
'That's near where Uncle Monty lived,' Violet said. 'Let's not live there — it'll make us miss Uncle Monty even more than we already do.'
Klaus nodded in agreement. 'Besides,' he said, 'the town is near Lousy Lane, so it probably smells like horseradish. Here's a village I've never heard of — Ophelia.'
'No, no,' Mr. Poe said. 'I won't have you living in the same town as the Ophelia Bank. It's one of my least favorite banks, and I don't want to have to walk by it when I visit you.'
'Zounce!' Sunny said, which meant 'That's ridiculous!' but Klaus nudged her with his elbow and pointed to the next village listed on the brochure, and Sunny quickly changed her tune, a phrase which here means 'immediately said 'Gounce!' instead, which meant something along the lines of 'Let's live there!''
'Gounce indeed,' Klaus agreed, and showed Violet what he and Sunny were talking about. Violet gasped, and the three siblings looked at one another and felt a little flutter in their stomachs again. But this was less of a nervous flutter and more of a hopeful one — a hope that maybe Mr. Poe's last phone call really had solved all their problems, and that maybe what they read right here in the brochure would turn out to be more important than what they didn't read in the newspaper. For at the bottom of the list of villages, below Paltryville and Tedia and Ophelia, was the most important thing they had read all morning. Printed in the flowery script, on the back page of the brochure Mr. Poe had given them, were the letters V.F.D.
Chapter Two
When you are traveling by bus, it is always difficult to decide whether you should sit in a seat by the window, a seat on the aisle, or a seat in the middle. If you take an aisle seat, you have the advantage of being able to stretch your legs whenever you like, but you have the disadvantage of people walking by you, and they can accidentally step on your toes or spill something on your clothing. If you take a window seat, you have the advantage of getting a clear view of the scenery, but you have the disadvantage of watching insects die as they hit the glass. If you take a middle seat, you have neither of these advantages, and you have the added disadvantage of people leaning all over you when they fall asleep. You can see at once why you should always arrange to hire a limousine or rent a mule rather than take the bus to your destination.
The Baudelaire orphans, however, did not have the money to hire a limousine, and it would have taken them several weeks to reach V.F.D. by mule, so they were traveling to their new home by bus. The children had thought that it might take a lot of effort to convince Mr. Poe to choose V.F.D. as their new village guardian, but right when they saw the three initials on the brochure, one of Mr. Poe's telephones rang, and by the time he was off the phone he was too busy to argue. All he had time to do was make arrangements with the city government and take them to the bus station. As he saw them off — a phrase which here means 'put the Baudelaires on a bus, rather than
