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Chapter One
If you were going to give a gold medal
to the least delightful person on Earth,
you would have to give that medal to a
person named Carmelita Spats, and if you
didn't give it to her, Carmelita Spats was
the sort of person who would rip it from
your hands anyway. Carmelita Spats was
rude, she was violent, and she was filthy,
and it is really a shame that I must
describe her to you, because there are
enough ghastly and distressing things in
this story without even mentioning such an
unpleasant person.
It is the Baudelaire orphans, thank
goodness, who are the heroes of this
story, not the dreadful Carmelita Spats,
and if you wanted to give a gold medal to
Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, it
would be for survival in the face of
adversity. Adversity is a word which here
means "trouble," and there are very few
people in this world who have had the sort
of troubling adversity that follows these
three children wherever they go. Their
trouble began one day when they were
relaxing at the beach and received the
distressing news that their parents had
been killed in a terrible fire, and so
were sent to live with a distant relative
named Count Olaf.
If you were to give a gold medal to
Count Olaf, you would have to lock it up
someplace before the awarding ceremony,
because Count Olaf is such a greedy and
evil man that he would try to steal it
beforehand. The Baudelaire orphans did not
have a gold medal, but they did have an
enormous fortune that their parents had
left them, and it was that fortune Count
Olaf tried to snatch. The three siblings
survived living with Count Olaf, but just
barely, and since then Count Olaf has
followed them everywhere, usually
accompanied by one or more of his sinister
and ugly associates. No matter who was
caring for the Baudelaires, Count Olaf was
always right behind them, performing such
dastardly deeds that I can scarcely list
them all: kidnapping, murder, nasty phone
calls, disguises, poison, hypnosis, and
atrocious cooking are just some of the
adversities the Baudelaire orphans
survived at his hands. Even worse, Count
Olaf had a bad habit of avoiding capture,
so he was always sure to turn up again. It
is truly awful that this keeps happening,
but that is how the story goes.
I only tell you that the story goes
this way because you are about to become
acquainted with rude, filthy Carmelita
Spats, and if you can't stand reading
about her, you had better put this book
down and read something else, because it
only gets worse from here. Before too
long, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire
will have so much adversity that being
shoved aside by Carmelita Spats will look
like a trip to the ice cream parlor.
"Get out of my way, you cakesniffers!"
said a rude, violent, and filthy little
girl, shoving the Baudelaire orphans aside
as she dashed by. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny
were too startled to answer. They were
standing on a sidewalk made of bricks,
which must have been very old because
there was a great deal of dark moss oozing
out from in between them. Surrounding the
sidewalk was a vast brown lawn that looked
like it had never been watered, and on the
lawn were hundreds of children running in
various directions. It looked exhausting
and pointless, two things that should be
avoided at all costs, but the Baudelaire
orphans barely glanced at the other
children, keeping their eyes on the mossy
bricks below them.
Shyness is a curious thing, because,
like quicksand, it can strike people at
any time, and also, like quicksand, it
usually makes its victims look down. This
was to be the Baudelaires first day at
Prufrock Preparatory School, and all three
siblings found they would rather look at
the oozing moss than at anything else.
"Have you dropped something?" Mr. Poe
asked, coughing into a white handkerchief.
One place the Baudelaires certainly didn't
want to look was at Mr. Poe, who was
walking closely behind them. Mr. Poe was a
banker who had been placed in charge of
the Baudelaires' affairs following the
terrible fire, and this had turned out to
be a lousy idea. Mr. Poe meant well, but a
jar of mustard probably means well and
would do a better job of keeping the
Baudelaires out of danger. Violet, Klaus,
and Sunny had learned long ago that the
only thing could count on from Mr. Poe was
that he was always coughing.
"No," Violet replied, "we haven't
dropped anything." Violet was the oldest
Baudelaire, and usually she was not shy at
all. Violet liked to invent things, and
one could often find her thinking hard
about her latest invention, with her hair
tied in a ribbon to keep it out of her
eyes. When her inventions were done, she
liked to show them to people she knew, who
were usually very impressed with her
skill. Right now, as she looked at the
mossy bricks, she thought of a machine she
could build that could keep moss from
growing on the sidewalk but she felt too
nervous to talk about it. What if none of
the teachers, children, or administrative
staff were interested in her
inventions?
As if he were reading her thoughts,
Klaus put a hand on Violet's shoulder, and
she smiled at him. Klaus had known for all
twelve of his years that his older sister
found a hand on her shoulder comforting -
as long as the hand was attached to an
arm, of course. Normally Klaus would have
said something comforting as well, but he
was feeling as shy as his sister. Most of
the time, Klaus could be found doing what
he liked to do best, which was reading.
Some mornings one could find him in bed
with his glasses on because he had been
reading so late that was too tired to take
them off. Klaus looked down at the
sidewalk and remembered a book he had read
called MOSS MYSTERIES, but he felt too shy
to bring it up. What if Prufrock
Preparatory School had nothing good to
read?
Sunny, the youngest Baudelaire, looked
up at her siblings, and Violet smiled and
picked her up. This was easy to do because
Sunny was a baby and only a little bit
larger than a loaf of bread. Sunny was
also too nervous to say anything, although
it was often difficult to understand what
she said when she did speak up. For
instance, if Sunny had not been feeling so
shy, she might have opened her mouth and
said "Marimo!" which may have meant "I
hope there are plenty of things to bite at
school, because biting things is one of my
favorite things to do!"
"I know why you're all so quiet," Mr.
Poe said. "It's because you're excited,
and I don't blame you. I always wanted to
go to boarding school when I was younger
but I never had the chance. I'm a little
jealous of you, if you want to know the
truth."
The Baudelaires looked at one another.
The fact that Prufrock Preparatory School
was boarding school was the part that made
them feel the most nervous. If no one was
interested in inventions, or there was
nothing to read, or biting wasn't allowed,
they were stuck there, not only all day
but all night as well. The siblings wished
that if Mr. Poe were really jealous of
them he would attend Prufrock Preparatory
School himself, and they could work at the
bank.
"You're very luck to be here," Mr. Poe
continued. "I had to call more than four
schools before I found one that could take
all three of you at such short notice.
Prufrock Prep - that's what they call it,
as a sort of nickname - is a very fine
academy. The teachers all have advanced
degrees. The dormitory rooms are all
finely furnished. And most important of
all, there is an advanced computer system
that will keep Count Olaf away from you.
Vice Principal Nero told me that Count
Olaf's complete description - everything
from his one long eyebrow to the tattoo of
an eye on his left ankle - has been
programmed into the computer, so you
should be safe here for the next several
years."
"But how can a computer keep Count Olaf
away?" Violet asked in a puzzled voice,
still looking down at the ground.
"It's an advanced computer," Mr. Poe
said, as if the word "advanced" were a
proper explanation instead of a word
meaning "having a attained advancement."
"Don't worry your little heads about Count
Olaf. Vice Principal Nero has promised me
that he will keep a close eye on you.
After all, a school as advanced as
Prufrock Prep wouldn't allow people to
simply run around loose."
"Move, cakesniffers!" the rude,
violent, and filthy little girl said as
she dashed by them again.
"What does 'cakesniffers' mean?" Violet
murmured to Klaus, who had an enormous
vocabulary from all his reading.
"I don't know," Klaus admitted, "but it
doesn't sound very nice."
"What a charming word that is," Mr. Poe
said. "Cakesniffers. I don't know what it
means, but it reminds me of pastry. Oh
well, here we are." They had come to the
end do the mossy brick sidewalk and stood
in front of the school. The Baudelaires
looked up at their new home and gasped in
surprise. Had they not been staring at the
sidewalk the whole way across the lawn,
they would have seen what the academy
looked like, but perhaps it was best to
delay looking at it for as long as
possible. A person who designs buildings
is called an architect, but in the case of
Prufrock Prep a better term might be
"depressed architect ." The school was
made up of several buildings, all made of
smooth gray stone, and the buildings were
grouped together in a sort of sloppy line.
To get to the buildings, the Baudelaires
had to walk beneath an immense stone arch
casting a curved shadow on the lawn, like
a rainbow in which all the colors were
gray or black. On the arch were the words
"PRUFROCK PREPARATORY SCHOOL" in enormous
black letters, and then, in smaller
letters, the motto of the school, "Memento
Mori." But it was not the buildings or the
arch that made the children gasp, it was
how the buildings were shaped -
rectangular with a rounded top is a
strange shape, and the children could only
think of one thing with that shape. To the
Baudelaires each building looked exactly
like a gravestone.
"Rather odd architecture," Mr. Poe
commented. "Each building looks like a
thumb. In any case, you are to report to
Vice Principal Nero's office immediately.
It's on the ninth floor of the main
building."
"Aren't you coming with us, Mr. Poe?"
Violet asked. Violet was fourteen, and she
knew that fourteen was old enough to go to
somebody's office by herself, but she felt
nervous about walking into such a
sinister-looking building without an adult
nearby.
Mr. Poe coughed into his handkerchief
and looked at his wristwatch at the same
time. "I'm afraid not," he said when his
coughing had passed. "The banking day has
already begun. But I've talked over
everything with Vice Principal Nero, and
if there's any problem, remember you can
always contact me or any of my associates
at Mulctuary Money Management. Now, off
you go. Have a wonderful time at Prufrock
Prep."
"I'm sure we will," said Violet,
sounding much braver than she felt. "Thank
you for everything, Mr. Poe."
"Yes, thank you," Klaus said, shaking
the banker's hand.
"Terfunt," Sunny said, which was her
way of saying, "thank you."
"You're welcome, all of you," Mr. Poe
said. "So long." He nodded at all three
Baudelaires and Violet and Sunny watched
him walk back down the mossy sidewalk,
carefully avoiding the running children.
But Klaus didn't watch him. Klaus was
looking at the enormous arch over the
academy.
"Maybe I don't know what 'cakesniffer'
means," Klaus said, "but I think I can
translate our new school's motto."
"It doesn't even look like it's in
English," Violet said, peering up at
it.
"Racho," Sunny agreed.
"It's not," Klaus said. "It's in Latin.
Many mottoes are in Latin, for some
reason. I don't know very much Latin, but
I do remember reading this phrase in a
book about the Middle Ages. If it means
what I think it means, it's certainly a
strange motto."
"What do you think it means?" Violet
asked.
"If I'm not mistaken," said Klaus, who
was rarely mistaken, "Memento Mori means
'Remember you will Die.'"
"Remember you will die," Violet
repeated quietly, and the three siblings
stepped closer to one another, as if they
were very cold. Everybody will die, of
course, sooner or later. Circus performers
will die, and clarinet experts will die,
and you and I will die, and there might be
a person who lives on your block, right
now, who is not looking both ways before
he crosses the street and who will die in
just a few seconds, all because of a bus.
Everybody will die, but very few people
want to be reminded of that fact. The
children certainly did not want to
remember that would die, particularly as
they walked beneath the arch over Prufrock
Prep. The Baudelaire orphans did not need
to be reminded of this as they began their
first day in the giant graveyard that was
now their home.
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