"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, adolescents of both genders," he announced. "Hurry up and buy your delicious cold beverages, because the House of Freaks show is about to begin!"
"Look at all those freaks!" giggled one member of the audience, a middle-aged man with several large pimples on his chin. "There's a man with hooks instead of hands!"
"I'm not one of the freaks," the hook-handed man growled. "I work here at the carnival!"
"Oh, I'm sorry," the man said. "But if you don't mind my saying so, if you purchased a pair of realistic hands no one would make that mistake."
"It's not polite to comment on other people's appearances," the hook-handed man said sternly. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, gaze with horror on Hugo, the hunchback! Instead of a regular back, he has a big hump that makes him look very freakish!"
"That's true," said the pimpled man, who seemed willing to giggle at one person or another. "What a freak!"
The hook-handed man waved his large noodle in the air as a limp reminder to the Baudelaires and their coworkers. "Hugo!" he barked. "Put on your coat!"
As the audience tittered, Hugo walked to the front of the stage and tried to put on the coat he was holding. Usually, if someone has a body with an unusual shape, they will hire a tailor to alter their clothing so it will fit comfortably and attractively, but as Hugo struggled with the coat, it was clear that no such tailor had been hired. Hugo's hump wrinkled the back of the coat, and then stretched it, and then finally ripped it as he did up the buttons, so that within moments the coat was just a few pieces of tattered cloth. Blushing, Hugo retreated to the back of the stage and sat on a folding chair as the members of the tiny audience howled with laughter.
"Isn't that hilarious?" the hook-handed man said. "He can't even put on a coat! What a freakish person! But wait, ladies and gentlemen there's more!" Olaf's henchman shook the tagliatelle grande again while reaching into his pocket with his other hook. Smiling wickedly, he withdrew an ear of corn and held it up for the audience to see. "This is a simple ear of corn," he announced. "It's something that any normal person can eat. But here at Caligari Carnival, we don't have a House of Normal People. We have a House of Freaks, with a brand-new freak that will turn this ear of corn into a hilarious mess!" Violet and Klaus sighed, and walked to the center of the stage, and I do not think that I have to describe this tiresome show any longer. You can undoubtedly guess that the two eldest Baudelaires were forced to eat another ear of corn while a small group of people laughed at them, and that Colette was forced to twist her body into unusual shapes and positions, and that Kevin had to write his name with both his left and right hands, and that finally poor Sunny was forced to growl at the audience, although she was not a ferocious person by nature and would have preferred to greet them politely. And you can imagine how the crowd reacted as the hook-handed man announced each person and forced them to do these things. The seven or eight people laughed, and shouted cruel names, and made terrible and tasteless jokes, and one woman even threw her cold beverage, paper cup and all, at Kevin, as if someone who was both right-handed and left-handed somehow deserved to have wet and sticky stains on his shirt. But what you may not be able to imagine, unless you have had a similar experience yourself, is how humiliating it was to participate in such a show. You might think that being humiliated, like riding a bicycle or decoding a secret message, would get easier after you had done it a few times, but the Baudelaires had been laughed at more than a few times and it didn't make their experience in the House of Freaks easier at all. Violet remembered when a girl named Carmelita Spats had laughed at her and called her names, when the children were enrolled in Prufrock Preparatory School, but it still hurt her feelings when the hook-handed man announced her as something hilarious. Klaus remembered when Esm Squalor had insulted him at 667 Dark Avenue, but he still blushed when the audience pointed and giggled every time the ear of corn slipped out of his hands. And Sunny remembered all of the times Count Olaf had laughed at all three Baudelaires and their misfortune, but she still felt embarrassed and a little sick when the people called her "wolf freak" as she followed the other performers out of the tent when the show was over. The Baudelaire orphans even knew that they weren't really a two-headed person and a wolf baby, but as they sat with their coworkers in the freaks' caravan afterward, they felt so humiliated that it was as if they were as freakish as everyone thought.
"I don't like this place," Violet said to Kevin and Colette, sharing a chair with her brother at the caravan's table, while Hugo made hot chocolate at the stove. She was so upset that she almost forgot to speak in a low voice. "I don't like being stared at, and I don't like being laughed at. If people think it's funny when someone drops an ear of corn, they should stay home and drop it themselves."
"Kiwoon!" Sunny agreed, forgetting to growl. She meant something along the lines of, "I thought I was going to cry when all those people were calling me 'freak,'" but luckily only her siblings understood her, so she didn't give away her disguise.
"Don't worry," Klaus said to his sisters. "I don't think we'll stay here very long. The fortune-telling tent is closed today because Count Olaf and Madame Lulu are running that important errand." The middle Baudelaire did not need to add that it would be a good time to sneak into the tent and find out if Lulu's crystal ball really held the answers they were seeking.
"Why do you care if Lulu's tent is closed?" Colette asked. "You're a freak, not a fortuneteller."
"And why don't you want to stay here?" Kevin asked. "Caligari Carnival hasn't been very popular lately, but there's nowhere else for a freak to go."
"Of course there is," Violet said. "Lots of people are ambidextrous, Kevin. There are ambidextrous florists, and ambidextrous air-traffic controllers, and all sorts of things."
"You really think so?" Kevin asked.
"Of course I do," Violet said. "And it's the same with contortionists and hunchbacks. All of us could find some other type of job where people didn't think we were freakish at all."
"I'm not sure that's true," Hugo called over from the stove. "I think that a two-headed person is going to be considered pretty freakish no matter where they go."
"And it's probably the same with an ambidextrous person," Kevin said with a sigh.
"Let's try to forget our troubles and play dominoes," Hugo said, bringing over a tray with six steaming mugs of hot chocolate. "I thought both of your heads might want to drink separately," he explained with a smile, "particularly because this hot chocolate is a little bit unusual. Chabo the Wolf Baby added a little bit of cinnamon."
"Chabo added it?" Klaus asked with surprise, as Sunny growled modestly.
"Yes," Hugo said. "At first I thought it was some freaky wolf recipe, but it's actually quite tasty."
"That was a clever idea, Chabo," Klaus said, and gave his sister a squinty smile. It seemed only a little while ago that the youngest Baudelaire couldn't walk, and was small enough to fit inside a birdcage, and now she was developing her own interests, and was big enough to seem half wolf.
"You should be very proud of yourself," Hugo agreed. "If you weren't a freak, Chabo, you could grow up to be an excellent chef."
"She could be a chef anyway," Violet said. "Elliot, would you mind if we stepped outside to enjoy our hot chocolate?"
"That's a good idea," Klaus said quickly. "I've always considered hot chocolate to be an outdoor beverage, and I'd like to take a peek in the gift caravan."