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"What happened when?" Klaus asked, frowning. "Why, look! I'm not wearing any shoes!"
"Well, I certainly remember what happened!" Foreman Flacutono shouted, pointing at Klaus. "You smashed our machine! I will tell
Sir about this right away! You've put a complete halt to the stamping process! Nobody will earn a single coupon today!"
"That's not fair!" Violet said. "It was an accident. And Klaus never should have been put in charge of that machine! He didn't know how to use it!"
"Well, he'd better learn," Foreman Flacu-tono said. "Now pick up my pots, Klaus!"
Klaus went over to pick up the pots, but halfway there Foreman Flacutono stuck his foot out, playing the same trick he had played the previous day, and I'm sorry to tell you that it worked just as well. Again, Klaus fell right to the ground of the lumbermill, and again, his glasses fell off his face and skittered over to the bundle of boards, and worst of all, once again they became all twisted and cracked and hopelessly broken, like my friend Tatiana's sculptures.
"My glasses!" Klaus cried. "My glasses are broken again!"
Violet got a funny feeling in her stomach, all quivery and slithery as if she had eaten snakes, rather than gum, during the lunch break. "Are you sure?" she asked Klaus. "Are you sure you can't wear them?"
"I'm sure," Klaus said miserably, holding them up for Violet to see.
"Well, well, well," Foreman Flacutono said. "How careless of you. I guess you're due for another appointment with Dr. Orwell."
"We don't want to bother him," Violet said quickly. "If you give me some basic supplies, I'm sure I can build some glasses myself."
"No, no," the foreman said, his surgical mask curling into a frown. "You'd better leave optometry to the experts. Say good-bye to your brother."
"Oh, no," Violet said, desperately. She thought again of the promise she made to her parents. "We'll take him! Sunny and I will bring him to Dr. Orwell."
"Derix!" Sunny shrieked, which clearly meant something along the lines of "If we can't prevent him from going to Dr. Orwell, at least we can go with him!"
"Well, all right," said Foreman Flacutono, and his beady little eyes grew even darker than usual. "That's a good idea, come to think of it. Why don't all three of you go see Dr. Orwell?"
CHAPTER Eight
The Baudelaire orphans stood outside the gates of the Lucky Smells Lumbermill and looked at an ambulance rushing past them as it took Phil to the hospital. They looked at the chewed-up gum letters of the lumbermill sign. And they looked down at the cracked pavement of Paltry-ville's street. In short, they looked everywhere but at the eye-shaped building.
"We don't have to go," Violet said. "We could run away. We could hide until the next train arrived, and take it as far as possible. We know how to work in a lumbermill now, so we could get jobs in some other town."
"But what if he found us?" Klaus said, squinting at his sister. "Who would protect us from Count Olaf, if we were all by ourselves?"
"We could protect ourselves," Violet replied.
"How can we protect ourselves," Klaus asked, "when one of us is a baby and another one can barely see?"
"We've protected ourselves before," Violet said.
"Just barely," Klaus replied. "We've just barely escaped from Count Olaf each time. We can't run away and try to get along by ourselves, without glasses. We have to go see Dr. Orwell and hope for the best."
Sunny gave a little shriek of fear. Violet, of course, was too old to shriek except in emergency situations, but she was not too old to be frightened. "We don't know what will happen to us inside there," she said, looking at the black door in the eye's pupil. "Think, Klaus. Try to think. What happened to you when you went inside?"
"I don't know," Klaus said miserably. "I remember trying to tell Charles not to take me to the eye doctor, but he kept telling me that doctors were my friends, and not to be frightened."
"Ha!" Sunny shrieked, which meant "Ha!"
"And then what do you remember?" Violet asked.
Klaus closed his eyes in thought. "I wish I could tell you. But it's like that part of my brain has been wiped clean. It's like I was asleep from the moment I walked into that building until right there at the lumbermill."
"But you weren't asleep," Violet said. "You were walking around like a zombie. And then you caused that accident and hurt poor Phil."
"But I don't remember those things," Klaus said. "It's as if I…" His voice trailed off and he stared into space for a moment.
"Klaus?" Violet asked worriedly.
"… It's as if I were hypnotized," Klaus finished. He looked at Violet and then at Sunny, and his sisters could see that he was figuring something out. "Of course. Hypnosis would explain everything."
"I thought hypnosis was only in scary movies," Violet said.
"Oh, no," Klaus answered. "I read the Encyclopedia Hypnotica just last year. It described all these famous cases of hypnosis throughout history. There was an ancient Egyptian king who was hypnotized. All the hypnotist had to do was shout 'Ramses!' and the king would perform chicken imitations, even though he was in front of the royal court."
"That's very interesting," Violet said, "but-"
"A Chinese merchant who lived during the Ling Dynasty was hypnotized. All the hypnotist had to do was shout 'Mao!' and the merchant would play the violin, even though he had never seen one before."
"These are amazing stories," Violet said, "but-"
"A man who lived in England in the nineteen twenties was hypnotized. All the hypnotist had to do was shout 'Bloomsbury!' and he suddenly became a brilliant writer, even though he couldn't read."
"Mazee!" Sunny shrieked, which probably meant "We don't have time to hear all these stories, Klaus!"
Klaus grinned. "I'm sorry," he said, "but it was a very interesting book, and I'm so pleased that it's coming in handy."
"Well, what did the book say about how to stop yourself from being hypnotized?" Violet asked.
Klaus's grin faded. "Nothing," he said.
"Nothing?" Violet repeated. "An entire encyclopedia about hypnosis said nothing
about it at all?"
"If it did, I didn't read any of it. I thought the parts about the famous hypnosis cases were the most interesting, so I read those, but I skipped some of the boring parts."
For the first time since they had walked out of the gates of the lumbermill, the Baudelaire orphans looked at the eye-shaped building, and the building looked back at them. To Klaus, of course, Dr. Orwell's office just looked like a big blur, but to his sisters it looked like trouble. The round door, painted black to resemble the pupil of the eye, looked like a deep and endless hole, and the children felt as if they were going to fall into it.
"I'm never skipping the boring parts of a book again," Klaus said, and walked cautiously toward the building.
"You're not going inside?" Violet said incredulously, a word which here means "in a tone of voice to indicate Klaus was being foolish."
"What else can we do?" Klaus said quietly. He began to feel along the side of the building to find the door, and at this point in the story of the Baudelaire orphans, I would like to interrupt for a moment and answer a question I'm sure you are asking yourself. It is an important question, one which many, many people have asked many, many times, in many, many places all over the world. The Baudelaire orphans have asked it, of course. Mr. Poe has asked it. I have asked it. My beloved Beatrice, before her untimely death, asked it, although she asked it too late. The question is: Where is Count Olaf?
If you have been following the story of these three orphans since the very beginning, then you know that Count Olaf is always lurking around these poor children, plotting and scheming to get his hands on the Baudelaire fortune. Within days of the orphans' arrival at a new place, Count Olaf and his nefarious assistants-the word "nefarious" here means "Baudelaire-hating"-are usually on the scene, sneaking around and committing dastardly deeds. And yet so far he has been nowhere to be found. So, as the three youngsters reluctantly head toward Dr. Orwell's office, I know you must be asking yourself where in the world this despicable villain can be. The answer is: Very nearby.
