بخش 06

“You can’t go easy on children. They must be taught to obey their elders.”

“Are these those wealthy children you were telling me about?”

“Yes, they are so awful I can scarcely stand to touch them.” With that, he lowered Sunny, who was still wailing, to the floor. Violet and Klaus breathed a sigh of relief that he had not dropped her from that great height.

“I don’t blame you.”

Count Olaf rubbed his hands together as if he had been holding something revolting instead of an infant. “Well, enough talk. I suppose we will eat their dinner, even though it is all wrong. Everyone, follow me to the dining room and I will pour us some wine. Perhaps by the time these brats serve us, we will be too drunk to care if it is roast beef or not.”

“Hurrah!” They marched through the kitchen, following Count Olaf into the dining room. Nobody paid a bit of attention to the children, except for the bald man, who stopped and stared Violet in the eye.

“You’re a pretty one. If I were you I would try not to anger Count Olaf, or he might wreck that pretty little face of yours.” Violet shuddered, and the bald man gave a high-pitched giggle and left the room.

The Baudelaire children, alone in the kitchen, found themselves breathing heavily, as if they had just run a long distance. Sunny continued to wail, and Klaus found that his eyes were wet with tears as well. Only Violet didn’t cry, but merely trembled with fear and revulsion, a word which here means “an unpleasant mixture of horror and disgust.” For several moments none of them could speak.

“This is terrible, terrible. Violet, what can we do?”

“I don’t know. I’m afraid.”

“Me too,” Klaus said.

“Let’s have some dinner!” The theater troupe began pounding on the table in strict rhythm, which is an exceedingly rude thing to do.

“We’d better serve the puttanesca or who knows what Count Olaf will do to us.”

Violet thought of what the bald man had said, about wrecking her face, and nodded. The two of them looked at the pot of bubbling sauce, which had seemed so cozy while they were making it and now looked like a vat of blood. Then, leaving Sunny behind in the kitchen, they walked into the dining room, Klaus carrying a bowl of the interestingly shaped noodles and Violet carrying the pot of puttanesca sauce and a large ladle with which to serve it. The theater troupe was talking and cackling, drinking again and again from their wine cups and paying no attention to the Baudelaire orphans as they circled the table serving everyone dinner. Violet’s right hand ached from holding the heavy ladle. She thought of switching to her left hand, but because she was right-handed she was afraid she might spill the sauce with her left hand, which could enrage Count Olaf again. She stared miserably at Olaf’s plate of food and found herself wishing she had bought poison at the market and put it in the puttanesca sauce. Finally, they were through serving, and Klaus and Violet slipped back into the kitchen. They listened to the wild, rough laughter of Count Olaf and his theater troupe, and they picked at their own portions of food, too miserable to eat. Before long, Olaf’s friends were pounding on the table in strict rhythm again, and the orphans went out to the dining room to clear the table, and then again to serve the chocolate pudding. By now it was obvious that Count Olaf and his associates had drunk a great deal of wine, and they slouched at the table and spoke much less. Finally, they roused themselves, and trooped back through the kitchen, scarcely glancing at the children on their way out of the house. Count Olaf looked around the room, which was filled with dirty dishes.

“Because you haven’t cleaned up yet, I suppose you can be excused from attending tonight’s performance. But after cleaning up, you are to go straight to your beds.”

Klaus had been glaring at the floor, trying to hide how upset he was. But at this he could not remain silent. “You mean our bed! You have only provided us with one bed!”

Members of the theater troupe stopped in their tracks at this outburst, and glanced from Klaus to Count Olaf to see what would happen next. Count Olaf raised his one eyebrow, and his eyes shone bright, but he spoke calmly.

“If you would like another bed, tomorrow you may go into town and purchase one.”

“You know perfectly well we haven’t any money.”

“Of course you do. You are the inheritors of an enormous fortune.”

“That money is not to be used until Violet is of age.”

Count Olaf’s face grew very red. For a moment he said nothing. Then, in one sudden movement, he reached down and struck Klaus across the face. Klaus fell to the floor, his face inches from the eye tattooed on Olaf’s ankle. His glasses leaped from his face and skittered into a corner. His left cheek, where Olaf had struck him, felt as if it were on fire. The theater troupe laughed, and a few of them applauded as if Count Olaf had done something very brave instead of something despicable.

“Come on, friends. We’ll be late for our own performance.”

“If I know you, Olaf, you’ll figure out a way to get at that Baudelaire money.”

“We’ll see.” Count Olaf’s eyes were shining bright as if he already had an idea. There was another loud boom as the front door shut behind Count Olaf and his terrible friends, and the Baudelaire children were alone in the kitchen. Violet knelt at Klaus’s side, giving him a hug to try to make him feel better. Sunny crawled over to his glasses, picked them up, and brought them to him. Klaus began to sob, not so much from the pain but from rage at the terrible situation they were in. Violet and Sunny cried with him, and they continued weeping as they washed the dishes, and as they blew out the candles in the dining room, and as they changed out of their clothes and lay down to go to sleep, Klaus in the bed, Violet on the floor, Sunny on her little cushion of curtains. The moonlight shone through the window, and if anyone had looked into the Baudelaire orphans’ bedroom, they would have seen three children crying quietly all night long.