Series of Unfortunate Events: The Grim Grotto (5 page)

Chapter Five

When you are invited to dine, particularly with people you do not know very well, it always helps to have a conversational opener, a phrase which here means "an interesting sentence to say out loud in order to get people talking." Although lately it has become more and more difficult to attend dinner parties without the evening ending in gunfire or tapioca, I keep a list of good and had conversational openers in my commonplace book in order to avoid awkward pauses at the dinner table. "Who would like to see an assortment of photographs taken while I was on vacation?" for instance, is a very poor conversational opener, because it is likely to make your fellow diners shudder instead of talk, whereas good conversational openers are sentences such as "What would drive a man to commit arson?", "Why do so many stories of true love end in tragedy and despair?" and "Madame diLustro, I believe I've discovered your true identity!", all of which are likely to provoke discussions, arguments, and accusations, thus making the dinner party much more entertaining. When Klaus Baudelaire announced that he'd discovered the location of the sugar bowl, it was one of the best conversational openers in the history of dinner gatherings, because everyone aboard the Queequeg began talking at once, and dinner had not even been served. "Aye?" Captain Widdershins shouted. "You've figured out where the tide took it? Aye? But you just said you didn't know! Aye! You said you were confused by the tidal charts, and that oval marked 'G.G.'! Aye! And yet you've figured it out! Aye! You're a genius! Aye! You're a smarty-pants! Aye! You're a bookworm! Aye! You're brilliant! Aye! You're sensational! Aye! If you find me the sugar bowl, I'll allow you to marry Fiona!" "Stepfather!" Fiona cried, blushing behind her triangular glasses. "Don't worry," the captain replied, "we'll find a husband for Violet, too! Aye! Perhaps we'll find your long-lost brother, Fiona! He's much older, of course, and he's been missing for years, but if Klaus can locate the sugar bowl he could probably find him! Aye! He's a charming man, so you'd probably fall in love with him, Violet, and then we could have a double wedding! Aye! Right here in the Main Hall of the Queequeg! Aye! I would be happy to officiate! Aye! I have a bow tie I've been saving for a special occasion!" "Captain Widdershins," Violet said, "let's try to stick to the subject of the sugar bowl." She did not add that she was not interested in getting married for quite some time, particularly after Count Olaf had tried to marry her in one of his early schemes. "Aye!" the captain cried. "Of course! Naturally! Aye! Tell us everything, Klaus! We'll eat while you talk! Aye! Sunny! Cookie! Serve the chowder!" "Chowder is served!" announced Phil, as he hurried from the kitchen carrying two steaming bowls of thick soup. The youngest Baudelaire trailed behind him. Sunny was still a bit too young to carry hot food by herself, but she had found a pepper grinder, and circled the table offering fresh ground pepper to anyone who wanted some. "Double pepper for me, Sunny!" Captain Widdershins cried, snatching the first bowl of chowder, although it is more polite to let one's guests be served first. "A nice hot bowl of chowder! A double helping of pepper! The location of the sugar bowl! Aye! That'll blow the barnacles off me! Aye! I'm so glad I scooped you Baudelaires out of the stream!" "I'm glad, too," Fiona said, smiling shyly at Klaus. "I couldn't be happier about it," Phil said, serving two more bowls of chowder. "I thought I'd never see you Baudelaires again, and here you are! All three of you have grown up so nicely, even though you've been constantly pursued by an evil villain and falsely accused of numerous crimes!" "You certainly have had a harrowing journey," Fiona said, using a word which here means "frantic and extremely distressing." "I'm afraid we may have another harrowing journey ahead of us," Klaus said. "When Captain Widdershins was talking about the philosopher who said that all of life is just shadows in a cave, I realized at once what that oval must be." "A philosopher?" the captain asked. "That's impossible! Aye!" "Absurdio," Sunny said, which meant "Philosophers live at the tops of mountains or in ivory towers, not underneath the sea." "I think Klaus means a cave," Violet said quickly, rather than translating. "The oval must mark the entrance to a cave." "It begins right near Anwhistle Aquatics," Klaus said, pointing to the chart. "The currents of the ocean would have brought the sugar bowl right to the entrance, and then the currents of the cave would have carried it far inside." "But the chart only shows the entrance to the cave," Violet said. "We don't know what it's like inside. I wish Quigley was here. With his knowledge of maps, he might know the path of the cave." "But Quigley isn't here," Klaus said gently. "I guess we'll be traveling in uncharted waters." "That'll be fun," Phil said. The Baudelaires looked at one another. The phrase "uncharted waters" does not only refer to underground locations that do not appear on charts. It is a phrase that can describe any place that is unknown, such as a forest in which every explorer has been lost, or one's own future, which cannot be known until it arrives. You don't have to be an optimist, like Phil, to find uncharted waters fun. I myself have spent many an enjoyable afternoon exploring the uncharted waters of a book I have not read, or a hiding place I discovered in a sideboard, a word which here means "a piece of furniture in the dining room, with shelves and drawers to hold various useful items." But the Baudelaires had already spent a great deal of time exploring uncharted waters, from the uncharted waters of Lake Lachrymose and its terrifying creatures, to the uncharted waters of secrets found in the Library of Records at Heimlich Hospital, to the uncharted waters of Count Olaf's wickedness, which were deeper and darker than any waters of the sea. After all of their uncharted traveling, the Baudelaire orphans were not in the mood to explore any uncharted waters, and could not share Phil's optimistic enthusiasm. "It won't be the first time the Queequeg's been in uncharted waters," Captain Widdershins said. "Aye, most of this sea was first explored by V.F.D. submarines." "We thought V.F.D. stood for Volunteer Fire Department," Violet said. "Why would a fire department spend so much time underwater?" "V.F.D. isn't just a fire department," the captain said, but his voice was very quiet, as if he were talking more to himself than to his crew. "Aye, it started that way. But the volunteers were interested in every such thing! I was one of the first to sign up for Voluntary Fish Domestication. That was one of the missions of Anwhistle Aquatics. Aye! I spent four long years training salmon to swim upstream and search for forest fires. That was when you were very young, Fiona, but your brother worked right alongside me. You should have seen him sneaking extra worms to his favorites! Aye! The program was a modest success! Aye! But then Cafe Salmonella came along, and took our entire fleet away. The Snicket siblings fought as best they could. Aye! Historians call it the Snicket Snickersnee! Aye! But as the poet wrote, 'Too many waiters turn out to be traitors.' " "The Snicket siblings?" Klaus was quick to ask. "Aye!" the captain said. "Three of them, each as noble as the next. Aye! Kit Snicket helped build this submarine! Aye! Jacques Snicket proved that the Royal Gardens Fire was arson! Aye! And the third sibling, with the marmosets..." "You Baudelaires knew Jacques Snicket, didn't you?" asked Fiona, who wasn't shy about interrupting her stepfather. "Very briefly," Violet said, "and we recently found a message addressed to him. That's how we found about Thursday's gathering, at the last safe place." "Nobody would write a message to Jacques," Captain Widdershins said. "Aye! Jacques is dead!" "Etartsigam!" Sunny said, and her siblings quickly explained that she meant "The initials were J.S." "It must be some other J.S.," Fiona said. "Speaking of mysterious initials," Klaus said, "I wonder what G.G. stands for. If we knew what the cave was called, we might have a better idea of our journey." "Aye!" Captain Widdershins said. "Let's guess! Great Glen! Aye! Green Glade! Aye! Glamorous Glacier! Aye! Gleeful Gameroom! Aye! Glass Goulash! Aye! Gothic Government! Aye! Grandma's Gingivitis! Aye! Girl Getting-up-from-table! Aye!" Indeed, the captain's stepdaughter had stood up, wiped her mouth with a napkin embroidered with a portrait of Herman Melville, and walked over to a sideboard tucked into a far corner. Fiona opened a cabinet and revealed a few shelves stuffed with books. "Yesterday I started reading a new addition to my mycological library," she said, standing on tiptoes to reach the shelf. "I just remembered reading something that might come in handy." The captain fingered his mustache in astonishment. "You and your mushrooms and molds!" the captain said. "I thought I'd never live to see your mycological studies be put to good use," and I'm sorry to say he was right. "Let's see," Fiona said, paging through a thick book entitled Mushroom Minutiae, a word which here means "obscure facts." "It was in the table of contents, that's all I've read so far. It was about halfway through." She brought the book over to the table, and ran a finger down the table of contents while the Baudelaires leaned over to see. "Chapter Thirty-Six, The Yeast of Beasts. Chapter Thirty-Seven, Morel Behavior in a Free Society. Chapter Thirty-Eight, Fungible Mold, Moldable Fungi. Chapter Thirty-Nine, Visitable Fungal Ditches. Chapter Forty, The Gorgonian Grotto, there!" "Grotto?" Sunny asked. " 'Grotto' is another word for 'cave'," Klaus explained, as Fiona flipped ahead to Chapter Forty." 'The Gorgonian Grotto,' " she read, " 'located in propinquity to Anwhistle Aquatics, has appropriately wraithlike nomenclature, with roots in Grecian mythology, as this conical cavern is fecund with what is perhaps the bugaboo of the entire mycological pantheon.' " "Aye! I told you that book was too difficult!" Captain Widdershins said. "A young child can't unlock that sort of vocabulary." "It's a very complicated prose style," Klaus admitted, "but I think I know what it says. The Gorgonian Grotto was named after something in Greek mythology." "A Gorgon," Violet said. "Like that woman with snakes instead of hair." "She could turn people into stone," Fiona said. "She was probably nice, when you got to know her," Phil said. "Aye! I think I went to school with such a woman!" the captain said. "I don't think she was a real person," Klaus said. "I think she was legendary. The book says it's appropriate that the grotto is named after a legendary monster, because there's a sort of monster living in a cave, a bugaboo." "Bugaboo?" Sunny asked. "A bugaboo can be any kind of monster," Klaus said. "We could call Count Olaf a bugaboo, if we felt so inclined." "I'd rather not speak of him at all," Violet said. "This bugaboo is a fungus of some sort," Fiona said, and continued reading from Mushroom Minutiae. " 'The Medusoid Mycelium has a unique conducive strategy of waxing and waning: first a brief dormant cycle, in which the mycelium is nearly invisible, and then a precipitated flowering into speckled stalks and caps of such intense venom that it is fortunate the grotto serves as quarantine.' " "I didn't understand all of that scientific terminology," Klaus said. "I did," Fiona said. "There are three main parts to a mushroom. One is the cap, which is shaped like an umbrella, and the second is the stalk, which holds the umbrella up. Those are the parts you can see." "There's part of a mushroom you can't see?" Violet asked. "It's called the mycelium," Fiona replied. "It's like a bunch of thread, branching out underneath the ground. Some mushrooms have mycelia that go on for miles." "How do you spell 'mycelium'?" Klaus asked, reaching into his waterproof pocket. "I want to write this down in my commonplace book." Fiona pointed the word out on the page. "The Medusoid Mycelium waxes and wanes," she said, "which means that the caps and stalks spring up from the mycelium, and then wither away, and then spring up again. It sounds like you wouldn't know the mushrooms are there until they poke up out of the ground." The Baudelaires pictured a group of mushrooms suddenly springing up under their feet, and felt a bit queasy, as if they already knew of the dreadful encounter they would soon have with this terrible fungus."That sounds unnerving," Violet said. "It gets worse," Fiona said. "The mushrooms are exceedingly poisonous. Listen to this: 'As the poet says, "A single spore has such grim power / That you may die within the hour." ' A spore is like a seed, if it has a place to grow, it will become another mycelium. But if someone eats it, or even breathes it in, it can cause death." "Within the hour?" Klaus said. "That's a fast-acting poison." "Most fungal poisons have cures," Fiona said. "The poison of a deadly fungus can be the source of some wonderful medicines. I've been working on a few myself. But this book says it's lucky the grotto acts as quarantine." "Quarwa?" Sunny asked. "Quarantine is when something dangerous is isolated, so the danger cannot spread," Klaus explained. "Because the Medusoid Mycelium is in uncharted waters, very few people have been poisoned. If someone brought even one spore to dry land, who knows what would happen?" "We won't find out!" Captain Widdershins said. "We're not going to take any spores! Aye! We're just going to grab the sugar bowl and be on our way! Aye! I'll set a course right now!" The captain bounded up from the table and began climbing the rope ladder to the Queequeg's controls.c"Are you sure we should continue our mission?" Fiona asked her stepfather, shutting the book. "It sounds very dangerous." "Dangerous? Aye! Dangerous and scary! Aye! Scary and difficult! Aye! Difficult and mysterious! Aye! Mysterious and uncomfortable! Aye! Uncomfortable and risky! Aye! Risky and noble! Aye!" "I suppose the fungus can't hurt us if we're inside the submarine," Phil said, struggling to remain optimistic. "Even if it could!" the captain cried, standing at the top of the rope ladder and gesturing dramatically as he delivered an impassioned oratory, a phrase which here means "emotional speech that the Baudelaires found utterly convincing, even if they did not quite agree with every word." "The amount of treachery in this world is enormous!" he cried. "Aye! Think of the crafts we saw on the sonar screen! Think of Count Olaf's enormous submarine, and the even more enormous one that chased it away! Aye! "There's always something more enormous and more terrifying on our tails! Aye! And so many of the noble submarines are gone! Aye! You
think the Herman Melville suits are the only noble uniforms in the world? There used to be volunteers with P G. Wodehouse on their uniforms, and Carl Van Vechten. There was Comyns and Cleary and Archy and Mehitabel. But now volunteers are scarce! So the best we can do is one small noble thing! Aye! Like retrieving the sugar bowl from the Gorgonian Grotto, no matter how grim it sounds! Aye! Remember my personal philosophy! He who hesitates is lost!" "Or she!" Fiona said. "Or she," the captain agreed. "Aye?" "Aye!" Violet cried. "Aye!" Klaus shouted. "Aye!" Sunny shrieked. "Hooray!" Phil yelled. Captain Widdershins peered down in annoyance at Phil, whom he would have preferred say "Aye!" along with everyone else. "Cookie!" he ordered. "Do the dishes! The rest of you get some shut-eye! Aye!" "Shut-eye?" Violet asked. "Aye! It means 'sleep'!" the captain explained. "We know what it means," Klaus said. "We're just surprised that we're supposed to sleep through the mission." "It'll take some time to get to the cave!" the captain said. "I want you four to be well-rested in case you're needed! Now go to your barracks! Aye!" It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting. The Baudelaires were not particularly in the mood to toss and turn in the Queequeg's barracks, a word which here means "a type of bedroom that is usually uncomfortable", as the submarine drew closer and closer to the mysterious grotto and its indispensable item, a phrase which here means "the sugar bowl, although the children did not know why it was so important." But as they followed Fiona out of the Main Hall and back down the corridor, past the plaque advertising the captain's personal philosophy, the door to the supply room, and an uncountable number of leaky metal pipes, the siblings felt quite tired, and by the time Fiona opened a door to reveal a small, green-lit room stacked with saggy bunk beds, the three children were already yawning. Perhaps it was because of their long, exhausting day, which had begun on the icy summit of Mount Fraught, but Violet didn't ponder one single mechanical idea as she got into bed, as she usually did before she went to sleep. Klaus scarcely had time to put his glasses on a small bedside table before he nodded off, a phrase which here means "fell asleep without considering even one of the books he had recently read." Sunny curled up on a pillow, and she didn't waste one moment dreaming up new recipes, preferably entrees that were less mushy than chowder, as she still enjoyed biting things as much as she did when she was a baby, before she was dreaming herself. And even Fiona, whose bedtime habits are less familiar to me than that of the Baudelaires', put her glasses next to Klaus's and was asleep in moments. The whirring engine of the Queequeg sent them deeper and deeper into slumber for several hours, and they probably would have slept much longer if the children hadn't been awakened by a terrible, and terribly familiar noise. It was a loud, unnerving scraping, like fingernails against a chalkboard, and the Baudelaires were almost shaken out of bed as the entire submarine rattled. "What was that?" Violet asked. "We hit something," Fiona said grimly, grabbing her glasses in one hand and her diving helmet in the other. "We'd better see what the situation is." The Baudelaires nodded in agreement, and hurried out of the barracks and back down the corridor. There was an unnerving splashing sound coming from a few of the tubes, and Klaus had to pick up Sunny to carry her over several large puddles. "Is the submarine collapsing?" Klaus asked. "We'll know soon enough," Fiona said, and she was correct. In moments she'd led the Baudelaires Back into the Main Hall, where Phil and the captain were standing at the table, staring out the porthole into black nothingness. They each had grim expressions on their faces, although Phil was trying to smile at the same time. "It's good you got some rest," the optimist said. "There's a real adventure ahead of you." "I'm glad you brought your diving helmets," Captain Widdershins said. "Aye!" "Why?" Violet asked. "Is the Queequeg seriously damaged?" "Aye!" the captain said. "I mean, no. The submarine is damaged, but she'll hold for now. We reached the Gorgonian Grotto about an hour ago, and I was able to steer us inside with no problem. But the cave got narrower and narrower as we maneuvered further and further inside." "The book said the grotto was conical," Klaus said. "That means it's shaped like a cone." "Aye!" the captain said. "The entrance was the wide end of the cone, but now it's too narrow for the submarine to travel. If we want to retrieve the sugar bowl we'll have to use something smaller." "Periscope?" Sunny asked. "No," Captain Widdershins replied. "A child."