CHAPTER Eight

When someone's tongue swells up due to an allergic reaction, it is often difficult to understand what they are saying.

"Bluh bluh bluh bluh bluh," Klaus said, as the three children got out of the taxi and headed toward the peeling white door of Aunt Josephine's house.

"I don't understand what you're saying," Violet said, scratching at a hive on her neck that was the exact shape of the state of Minnesota.

"Bluh bluh bluh bluh bluh," Klaus repeated, or perhaps he was saying something else; I haven't the faintest idea.

"Never mind, never mind," Violet said, opening the door and ushering her siblings inside. "Now you have the time that you need to figure out whatever it is that you're figuring out."

"Bluh bluh bluh," Klaus bluhed.

"I still can't understand you," Violet said. She took Sunny's coat off, and then her own, and dropped them both on the floor. Normally, of course, one should hang up one's coat on a hook or in a closet, but itchy hives are very irritating and tend to make one abandon such matters. "I'm going to assume, Klaus, that you said something in agreement. Now, unless you need us to help you, I'm going to give Sunny and myself a baking soda bath to help our hives."

"Bluh!" Sunny shrieked. She meant to shriek "Gans!" which meant something along the lines of "Good, because my hives are driving me crazy!"

"Bluh," Klaus said, nodding vigorously, and he began hurrying down the hallway. Klaus had not taken off his coat, but it wasn't because of his own irritating allergic condition. It was because he was going someplace cold.

When Klaus opened the door of the library, he was surprised at how much had changed. The wind from the approaching hurricane had blown away the last of the window, and the rain had soaked some of Aunt Josephine's comfortable chairs, leaving dark, spreading stains. A few books had fallen from their shelves and blown over to the window, where water had swollen them. There are few sights sadder than a ruined book, but Klaus had no time to be sad. He knew Captain Sham would come and retrieve the Baudelaires as soon as he could, so he had to get right to work. First he took Aunt Josephine's note out of his pocket and placed it on the table, weighing it down with books so it wouldn't blow away in the wind. Then he crossed quickly to the shelves and began to scan the spines of the books, looking for titles. He chose three: Basic Rules of Grammar and Punctuation, Handbook for Advanced Apostrophe Use, and The Correct Spelling of Every English Word That Ever, Ever Existed. Each of the books was as thick as a watermelon, and Klaus staggered under the weight of carrying all three. With a loud thump he dropped them on the table. "Bluh bluh bluh, bluh bluh bluh bluh," he mumbled to himself, and found a pen and got to work.

A library is normally a very good place to work in the afternoon, but not if its window has been smashed and there is a hurricane approaching. The wind blew colder and colder, and it rained harder and harder, and the room became more and more unpleasant. But Klaus took no notice of this. He opened all of the books and took copious-the word "copious" here means "lots of-notes, stopping every so often to draw a circle around some part of what Aunt Josephine had written. It began to thunder outside, and with each roll of thunder the entire house shook, but Klaus kept flipping pages and writing things down. Then, as lightning began to flash outside, he stopped, and stared at the note for a long time, frowning intently. Finally, he wrote two words at the bottom of Aunt Josephine's note, concentrating so hard as he did so that when Violet and Sunny entered the library and called out his name he nearly jumped out of his chair.

"Bluh surprised bluh!" he shrieked, his heart pounding and his tongue a bit less swollen.

"I'm sorry," Violet said. "I didn't mean to surprise you."

"Bluh bluh take a baking soda bluh?" he asked.

"No," Violet replied. "We couldn't take a baking soda bath. Aunt Josephine doesn't have any baking soda, because she never turns on the oven to bake. We just took a regular bath. But that doesn't matter, Klaus. What have you been doing, in this freezing room? Why have you drawn circles all over Aunt Josephine's note?"

"Bluhdying grammar," he replied, gesturing to the books.

"Bluh?" Sunny shrieked, which probably meant "gluh?" which meant something along the lines of "Why are you wasting valuable time studying grammar?"

"Bluhcause," Klaus explained impatiently, "I think bluh Josephine left us a message in bluh note."

"She was miserable, and she threw herself out the window," Violet said, shivering in the wind. "What other message could there be?"

"There are too many grammatical mistakes in the bluh," Klaus said. "Aunt Josephine loved grammar, and she'd never make that many mistakes unless she had a bluh reason. So that's what I've been doing bluh-counting up the grammatical mistakes."

"Bluh," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "Please continue, Klaus."

Klaus wiped a few raindrops off his glasses and looked down at his notes. "Well, we already know that bluh first sentence uses the wrong 'its.' I think that was to get our attention. But look at the second bluhtence. 'My heart is as cold as Ike and I find life inbearable.'"

"But the correct word is unbearable," Violet said. "You told us that already."

"Bluh I think there's more," Klaus said. '"My heart is as cold as Ike' doesn't sound right to me. Remember, Aunt Josephine told us bluh liked to think of her husband someplace very hot."

"That's true," Violet said, remembering. "She said it right here in this very room. She said Ike liked the sunshine and so she imagined him someplace sunny."

"So I think Aunt Bluhsephine meant 'cold as ice"' Klaus said.

"Okay, so we have ice and unbearable. So far this doesn't mean anything to me," Violet said.

"Me neither," Klaus said. "But look at bluh next part. 'I know your children may not understand the sad life of a dowadger.' We don't have any children."

"That's true," Violet said. "I'm not planning to have children until I am considerably older."

"So why would Aunt Josephine say 'your children'? I think she meant 'you children.' And I looked up 'dowadger' in The Correct Spelling of Every English Word That Ever, Ever Existed.'"

"Why?" Violet asked. "You already know it's a fancy word for widow."

"It is a bluhncy word for widow," Klaus replied, "but it's spelled D-O-W-A-G-E-R. Aunt Josephine added an extra D."

"Cold as ice" Violet said, counting on her fingers, "unbearable, you children, and an extra D in dowager. That's not much of a message, Klaus."

"Let me finish," Klaus said. "I discovered even more grammbluhtical mistakes. When she wrote, 'or what would have leaded me to this desperate akt,' she meant 'what would have led me,' and the word 'act,' of course, is spelled with a C."

"Coik!" Sunny shrieked, which meant "Thinking about all this is making me dizzy!"

"Me too, Sunny," Violet said, lifting her sister up so she could sit on the table. "But let him finish."

"There are just bluh more," Klaus said, holding up two fingers. "One, she calls Captain Sham 'a kind and honorable men,' when she should have said 'a kind and honorable man.' And in the last sentence, Aunt Josephine wrote 'Please think of me kindly even though I'd done this terrible thing,' but according to the Handbook for Advanced Apostrophe Use, she should have written 'even though I've done this terrible thing.'"

"But so what?" Violet asked. "What do all these mistakes mean?"

Klaus smiled, and showed his sisters the two words he had written on the bottom of the note. "Curdled Cave," he read out loud.