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Michael Ende. Momo
Translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn
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PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
27 Wrights Lane, London w8 5TZ, England
Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 2.3rd Street, New York, New York 10010.
USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2,801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada
L3R IB4 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New
Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
England
First published in German as Momo, copyright © K. Thienernanns Verlag.
Stuttgart, 1973
Original English language translation published as The Grey Gentlemen
copyright © Burke Books Publishing Ltd., 1974
New English language translation copyright © Doubleday & Company Inc.,
New York, and Penguin Books Ltd. 1984
First published in Great Britain in a paperback as Momo by Penguin
Books 1984 Published in Puffin Books 1985
Reprinted 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988
Alt rights reserved
Made and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay Ltd. Bungay, Suffolk
Filmed in
Monophoto Sabon
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to
the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior
consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it u
published and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are! Up above the
world so high, Like a diamond in the sky!
Jane Taylor (1783-1827) .
Contents
PART ONE:
MOMO AND HER FRIENDS
1 The Amphitheatre 11
2 Listening 17
3 Makebelieve 24
4 Two Special Friends 34
5 Tall Stories 41
PART TWO: THE MEN IN GREY
6 The Timesaving Bank. 55
7 The Visitor 69
8 The Demonstration 91
9 The Trial 102
10 More Haste Less Speed 110
11 The Conference 111
12 Nowhere House 130
PART THREE: THE HOUR-LILIES
13 A Year and a Day 153
14 Three Lunches, No Answers 172
15 Found and Lost 179
16 Loneliness 188
17 The Square 196
18 The Pursuit 204
19 Under Siege 210
20 Pursuing the Pursuers 219
21 An End and a Beginning 227
AUTHOR S POSTSCRIPT 237
* PART ONE *
Momo and Her Friends
ONE
The Amphitheatre
Long, long ago, when people spoke languages quite different from our
own, many fine, big cities already existed in the sunny lands of the world.
There were towering palaces inhabited by kings and emperors; there were
broad streets, narrow alleyways and winding lanes; there were sumptuous
temples filled with idols of gold and marble; there were busy markets
selling wares from all over the world; and there were handsome, spacious
squares where people gathered to discuss the latest news and make speeches
or listen to them. Last but not least, there were theatres -- or, more
properly, amphitheatres.
An amphitheatre resembled a modern circus, except that it was built
entirely of stone. Seats for spectators were arranged in tiers, one above
the other, like steps lining the crater of a man-made volcano. Many such
buildings were circular, others semicircular, others oval.
Some amphitheatres were as big as football stadiums, others could hold
no more than a few hundred people. Some were resplendent with columns and
statues, others plain and unadorned. Having no roofs, amphitheatres were
open to the sky. This was why, in the more luxurious ones, spectators were
shielded from the heat of the sun or from sudden downpours by
gold-embroidered awnings suspended above their seats. In simple
amphitheatres, mats woven of rushes or straw served the same purpose. In
short, people made their amphitheatres as simple or luxurious as they could
afford -just as long as they had one, for our ancestors were enthusiastic
playgoers.
11
Whenever they saw exciting or amusing incidents acted out on stage,
they felt as if these makebelieve happenings were more real, in some
mysterious way, than their own humdrum lives, and they loved to feast their
eyes and ears on this kind of reality.
Thousands of years have passed since then. The great cities of long ago
lie in ruins, together with their temples and palaces. Wind and rain, heat
and cold have worn away and eaten into the stonework. Ruins are all that
remain of the amphitheatres, too. Crickets now inhabit their crumbling
walls, singing a monotonous song that sounds like the earth breathing in its
sleep.
A few of these ancient cities have survived to the present day,
however. Life there has changed, of course. People ride around in cars and
buses, have telephones and electric lights. But here and there among the
modem buildings one can still find a column or two, an archway, a stretch of
wall, or even an amphitheatre dating from olden times.
It was in a city of this kind that the story of Momo took place.
On the southern outskirts of the city, where the fields began and the
houses became shabbier and more tumbledown, the ruins of a small
amphitheatre lay hidden in a clump of pine trees. It had never been a grand
place, even in the old days, just a place of entertainment for poor folk.
When Momo arrived on the scene, the ruined amphitheatre had been almost
forgotten. Its existence was known to a few professors of archaeology, but
they took no further interest in it because there was nothing more to be
unearthed there. It wasn't an attraction to be compared with others in the
city, either, so the few stray tourists or sightseers who visited it from
time to time merely clambered around on the grass-grown tiers of seats, made
a lot of noise, took a couple of
12
snapshots, and went away again. Then silence returned to the stone
arena and the crickets started on the next verse of their interminable,
unchanging song.
The strange, round building was really known only to the folk who lived
in the immediate neighbourhood. They grazed their goats there, their
children played ball on what had once been the central stage, and
sweethearts would sometimes meet there in the evenings.
One day however, word went around that someone had moved into the
ruins. It was a child - a girl, most likely, though this was hard to say
because she wore such funny clothes. The newcomer's name was Momo.
Aside from being rather odd, Momo's personal appearance might well have
shocked anyone who set store by looking clean and tidy. She was so small and
thin that, with the best will in the world, no one could have told her age.
Her unruly mop of jet-black hair looked as if it had never seen a comb or a
pair of scissors. She had very big, beautiful eyes as black as her hair, and
feet of almost the same colour, for she nearly always went around barefoot.
Although she sometimes wore shoes in the wintertime, the only shoes she had
weren't a pair, and besides, they were far too big for her. This was because
Momo owned nothing apart from what she had found lying around or had been
given. Her ankle-length dress was a mass of patches of different colours,
and over it she wore a man's jacket, also far too big for her, with the
sleeves turned up at the wrist. Momo had decided against cutting them off
because she wisely reflected that she was still growing, and goodness only
knew if she would ever find another jacket as useful as this one, with all
its many pockets.
Beneath the grassy stage of the ruined amphitheatre, half choked with
rubble, were some underground chambers which could be reached by way of a
hole in the outer wall, and this was where Momo had set up house. One
afternoon, a group of men and women from the neighbourhood turned up and
13
tried to question her. Momo eyed them apprehensively, fearing that they
had come to chase her away, but she soon saw that they meant well. Being
poor like herself, they knew how hard life could be.
'So,' said one of the men, 'you like it here, do you?'
Momo nodded.
'And you want to stay here?'
'Yes, very much.'
'Won't you be missed, though?'
'No.'
'I mean, shouldn't you go home?'
'This is my home,' Momo said promptly.
'But where do you come from?'
Momo gestured vaguely at some undefined spot in the far distance.
'Who are your parents, then?' the man persisted.
Momo looked blankly from him to the others and gave a little shrug. The
men and women exchanged glances and sighed.
'There's no need to be scared,' the man went on, 'we haven't come to
evict you. We'd like to help you, that's all.'
Momo nodded and said nothing, not entirely reassured.
'You're called Momo, aren't you?'
'Yes.'
'That's a pretty name, but I've never heard it before. Who gave it to
you?'
'I did,' said Momo.
'You chose your own name?'
'Yes.'
'When were you born?'
Momo pondered this. 'As far as I can remember,' she said at length,
'I've always been around.'
'But don't you have any aunts or uncles or grandparents? Don't you have
any relations at all who'd give you a home?'
14
Momo just looked at the man in silence for a while. Then she murmured,
'This is my home, here.'
'That's all very well,' said the man, 'but you're only a kid. How old
are you really?'
Momo hesitated. 'A hundred,' she said.
They all laughed because they thought she was joking.
'No, seriously, how old are you?'
'A hundred and two,' Momo replied, still more hesitantly.
It was some time before the others realized that she'd picked up a few
numbers but had no precise idea of their meaning because no one had ever
taught her to count.
'Listen,' said the man, after conferring with the others, 'would you
mind if we told the police you're here? Then you'd be put in a children's
home where they'd feed you and give you a proper bed and teach you reading
and writing and lots of other things. How does that appeal to you?'
Momo gazed at him in horror. 'No,' she said in a low voice, 'I've
already been in one of those places. There were other children there, too,
and bars over the windows. We were beaten every day for no good reason - it
was awful. One night I climbed the wall and ran away. I wouldn't want to go
back there.'
'I can understand that,' said an old man, nodding, and the others could
understand and nodded too.
'Very well,' said one of the women, 'but you're still so little.
Someone has to take care of you.'
Momo looked relieved. 'I can take care of myself.'
'Can you really?' said the woman.
Momo didn't answer at once. Then she said softly, 'I don't need much.'
Again the others exchanged glances and sighed.
'Know something, Momo?' said the man who had spoken first. 'We were
wondering if you'd like to move in with one of us. It's true we don't have
much room ourselves. and most of us already have a horde of children to
feed,
15
but we reckon one more won't make any difference. What do you say?'
'Thank you,' Momo said, smiling for the first time. 'Thank you very
much, but couldn't you just let me go on living here?'
After much deliberation, the others finally agreed. It occurred to them
that she would be just as well off here as with one of them, so they decided
to look after Momo together. It would be easier, in any case, for all of
them to do so than for one of them alone.
They made an immediate start by spring-cleaning Memo's dilapidated
dungeon and refurbishing it as best they could. One of them, a bricklayer by
trade, built her a miniature cooking stove and produced a rusty stovepipe to
go with it. The old man, who was a carpenter, nailed together a little table
and two chairs out of some packing cases. As for the womenfolk, they brought
along a decrepit iron bedstead adorned with curlicues, a mattress with only
a few rents in it, and a couple of blankets. The stone cell beneath the
stage of the ruined amphitheatre became a snug little room. The bricklayer,
who fancied himself as an artist, added the finishing touch by painting a
pretty flower picture on the wall. He even painted a pretend frame around it
and a pretend nail as well.
Last of all, the people's children came along with whatever food they
could spare. One brought a morsel of cheese, another a hunk of bread,
another some fruit, and so on. And because so many children came, the
occasion turned into a regular housewarming party. Memo's installation in
the old amphitheatre was celebrated as zestfully as only the poor of this
world know how.
And that was the beginning of her friendship with the people of the
neighbourhood.
TWO
Listening
Momo was comfortably off from now on, at least in her own estimation.
She always had something to eat, sometimes more and sometimes less,
depending on circumstances and on what people could spare. She had a roof
over her head, she had a bed to sleep in, and she could make herself a fire
when it was cold. Most important of all, she had acquired a host of good
friends.
You may think that Momo had simply been fortunate to come across such
friendly people. This was precisely what Momo herself thought, but it soon
dawned on her neighbours that they had been no less fortunate. She became so
important to them that they wondered how they had ever managed without her
in the past. And the longer she stayed with them, the more indispensable she
became - so indispensable, in fact, that their one fear was that she might
some day move on.
The result was that Momo received a stream of visitors. She was almost
always to be seen with someone sitting beside her, talking earnestly, and
those who needed her but couldn't come themselves would send for her
instead. As for those who needed her but hadn't yet realized it, the others
used to tell them, 'Why not go and see Momo?'
In time, these words became a stock phrase with the local inhabitants.
Just as they said, 'All the best!' or 'So long!' or 'Heaven only knows!', so
they took to saying, on all sorts of occasions, 'Why not go and see Momo?'
Was Momo so incredibly bright that she always gave good
17
advice, or found the right words to console people in need of
consolation, or delivered fair and far-sighted opinions on their problems?
No, she was no more capable of that than anyone else of her age.
So could she do things that put people in a good mood? Could she sing
like a bird or play an instrument? Given that she lived in a kind of circus,
could she dance or do acrobatics?
No, it wasn't any of these either.
Was she a witch, then? Did she know some magic spell that would drive
away troubles and cares? Could she read a person's palm or foretell the
future in some other way?
No, what Momo was better at than anyone else was listening.
Anyone can listen, you may say - what's so special about that? - but
you'd be wrong. Very few people know how to listen properly, and Momo's way
of listening was quite unique.
She listened in a way that made slow-witted people have flashes of
inspiration. It wasn't that she actually said anything | or asked questions
that put such ideas into their heads. She simply sat there and listened with
the utmost attention and sympathy, fixing them with her big, dark eyes, and
they suddenly became aware of ideas whose existence they had never
suspected.
Momo could listen in such a way that worried and indecisive people knew
their own minds from one moment to the next, or shy people felt suddenly
confident and at ease, or downhearted people felt happy and hopeful. And if
someone felt that his life had been an utter failure, and that he himself
was only one among millions of wholly unimportant people who could be
replaced as easily as broken windowpanes, he would go and pour out his heart
to Momo. And, even as he spoke, he would come to realize
18
by some mysterious means that he was absolutely wrong:
that there was only one person like himself in the whole world, and
that, consequently, he mattered to the world in his own particular way.
Such was Momo's talent for listening.
One day, Momo received a visit from two close neighbours who had
quarrelled violently and weren't on speaking terms. Their friends had urged
them to 'go and see Momo' because it didn't do for neighbours to live at
daggers drawn. After objecting at first, the two men had reluctantly agreed.
One of them was the bricklayer who had built Momo's stove and painted
the pretty flower picture on her wall. Salvatore by name, he was a strapping
fellow with a black moustache that curled up at the ends. The other, Nino,
was skinny and always looked tired. Nino ran a small inn on the outskirts of
town, largely patronized by a handful of old men who spent the entire
evening reminiscing over one glass of wine. Nino and his plump wife,
Liliana, were also friends of Momo's and had often brought her good things
to eat.
So there the two men sat, one on each side of the stone arena, silently
scowling at nothing in particular.
When Momo saw how angry with each other they were, she couldn't decide
which one of them to approach first. Rather than offend either of them, she
sat down midway between them on the edge of the arena and looked at each in
turn, waiting to see what would happen. Lots of things take time, and time
was Momo's only form of wealth.
After the two of them had sat there in silence for minutes on end,
Salvatore abruptly stood up. 'I'm off,' he announced. 'I've shown my good
will by coming here, but the man's as stubborn as a mule, Momo, you can see
that for yourself.' And he turned on his heel.
19
'Goodbye and good riddance!' Nino called after him. 'You needn't have
bothered to come in the first place. I wouldn't make it up with a vicious
brute like you.'
Salvatore swung around, puce with rage. 'Who's a vicious brute?' he
demanded menacingly, retracing his steps. 'Say that again -- if you dare!'
'As often as you like!' yelled Nino. 'I suppose you think you're too
big and tough for anyone to speak the truth to your face. Well, / will - to
you and anyone else that cares to listen. That's right, come here and murder
me the way you tried to the other day!'
'I wish I had!' roared Salvatore, clenching his fists. 'There you are,
Momo, you see the dirty lies he tells? All I did was take him by the scruff
of the neck and dunk him in the pool of slops behind that lousy inn of his.
You couldn't even drown a rat in that.' Readdressing himself to Nino, he
shouted, 'Yes, you're still alive and kicking, worse luck!'
Insults flew thick and fast after that, and for a while Momo was at a
loss to know what it was all about and why the pair of them were so furious
with each other. It transpired, by degrees, that Salvatore's only reason for
assaulting Nino was that Nino had slapped his face in the presence of some
customers, though Nino counterclaimed that Salvatore had previously tried to
smash all his crockery.
'That's another dirty lie!' Salvatore said angrily. 'I only threw a jug
at the wall, and that was cracked already.'
'Maybe,' Nino retorted, 'but it was my jug. You had no right to do such
a thing.'
Salvatore protested that he had every right, seeing that Nino had cast
aspersions on his professional skill. He turned to Momo. 'Know what he said
about me? He said I couldn't build a wall straight because I was drunk
twenty-four hours a day. My great-grandfather was the same, he said, and
he'd helped to build the Leaning Tower of Pisa.' 'But Salvatore,' said Nino,
'I was only joking.'
20
'Some joke,' growled Salvatore. 'Very funny, I don't think!'
It then emerged that Nino had only been paying Salvatore back for
another joke. He'd woken up one morning to find some words daubed on the
tavern door in bright red paint. They read: THISINNISOUT. Nino had found
that just as unamusing.
The two of them spent some time wrangling over whose had been the
better joke. Then, after working themselves up into a lather again, they
broke off.
Momo was staring at them wide-eyed, but neither man quite knew how to
interpret her gaze. Was she secretly laughing at them, or was she sad?
Although her expression gave no clue, they suddenly seemed to see themselves
mirrored in her eyes and began to feel sheepish.
'Okay,' said Salvatore, 'maybe I shouldn't have painted those words on
your door, Nino, but I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't refused to serve
me so much as a single glass of wine. That was against the law, as you know
full well. I've always paid up, and you'd no call to treat me that way.'
'Oh, hadn't I just!' Nino retorted. 'What about the St Anthony
business? Ah, that's floored you, hasn't it! You cheated me right, left and
centre, and I wasn't going to take it lying down.'
'I cheated you?' Salvatore protested, smiting his brow. 'You've got it
the wrong way around. It was you that tried to cheat me, but you didn't
succeed.'
The fact was, Nino had hung a picture of St Anthony on the wall of the
bar-room -- a clipping from an illustrated magazine which he had cut out and
framed. Salvatore offered to buy this picture one day, ostensibly because he
found it so beautiful. By dint of skilful haggling, Nino had persuaded
Salvatore to part with a radio in exchange, laughing up his sleeve to think
that Salvatore was getting the worst of the bargain.
21
After the deal had been struck, it turned out that nestling between the
picture and its cardboard backing was a banknote of which Nino had known
nothing. Discovering that he had been outwitted, Nino angrily demanded the
money back because it hadn't been included in the bargain. Salvatore refused
to hand it over, whereupon Nino refused to serve him any more, and that was
how it had all begun.
Once they had traced their vendetta back to its original cause, the men
fell silent for a while.
Then Nino said, 'Be honest, Salvatore, did you or didn't you know about
that money before we made the deal?'
'Of course I knew, or I wouldn't have gone through with it.'
'In other words, you diddled me.'
'What? You mean you really didn't know about the money?'
'No, I swear I didn't.'
'There you are, then! It was you that tried to diddle me, or you
wouldn't have taken my radio in exchange for a worthless scrap of
newsprint.'
'How did you know about the money?' 'I saw another customer tuck it
into the back as a thank-you to St Anthony, a couple of nights before.' Nino
chewed his lip. 'Was it a lot of money?' 'Only what my radio was worth,'
said Salvatore. 'I see,' Nino said thoughtfully. 'So that's what all this is
about -- a clipping from a magazine.'
Salvatore scratched his head. 'I guess so,' he growled. 'You're welcome
to have it back, Nino.'
'Certainly not,' Nino replied with dignity. 'A deal's a deal. We shook
hands on it, after all.'
Quite suddenly, they both burst out laughing. Clambering down the stone
steps, they met in the middle of the grassy arena, exchanged bear-hugs and
slapped each other on the back. Then they hugged Momo and thanked her
profusely.
22
When they left a few minutes later, Momo stood waving till they were
out of sight. She was glad her two friends had made up.
Another time, a little boy brought her his canary because it wouldn't
sing. Momo found that a far harder proposition. She had to sit and listen to
the bird for a whole week before it started to trill and warble again.
Momo listened to everyone and everything, to dogs and cats, crickets
and tortoises -- even to the rain and the wind in the pine trees - and all
of them spoke to her after their own fashion.
Many were the evenings when, after her friends had gone home, she would
sit by herself in the middle of the old stone amphitheatre, with the sky's
starry vault overhead, and simply listen to the great silence around her.
Whenever she did this, she felt she was sitting at the centre of a
giant ear, listening to the world of the stars, and she seemed to hear soft
but majestic music that touched her heart in the strangest way. On nights
like these, she always had the most beautiful dreams.
Those who still think that listening isn't an art should see if they
can do it half as well.
THREE
Makebelieve
Although Momo listened to grown-ups and children with equal sympathy
and attention, the children had a special reason for enjoying their visits
to the amphitheatre as much as they did. Now that she was living there, they
found they could play better games than ever before. They were never bored
for an instant, but not because she contributed a lot of ingenious
suggestions. Momo was there and joined in, that was all, but for some reason
her mere presence put bright ideas into their heads. They invented new games
every day, and each was an improvement on the last.
One hot and sultry afternoon, a dozen or so children were sitting
around on the stone steps waiting for Momo, who had gone for a stroll
nearby, as she sometimes did. From the look of the sky, which was filled
with fat black clouds, there would soon be a thunderstorm.
'I'm going home,' said one girl, who had a little sister with her.
'Thunder and lightning scares me.'
'What about when you're at home?' asked a boy in glasses. 'Doesn't it
scare you there?' 'Of course it does,' she said. 'Then you may as well
stay,' said the boy. The girl shrugged her shoulders and nodded. After a
while she said, 'But maybe Momo won't turn up.'
'So what?' another voice broke in. It belonged to a rather ragged and
neglected-looking boy. 'Even if she doesn't, we can still play a game.'
24
•All right, but what?'
'1 don't know. Something or other.'
'Something or other's no good. Anyone got an idea?'
'I know,' said a fat boy with a high-pitched voice. 'Let's pretend the
amphitheatre's a ship, and we sail off across uncharted seas and have
adventures. I'll be the captain, you can be first mate, and you can be a
professor - a scientist, because it's a scientific expedition. The rest of
you can be sailors.'
'What about us girls?' came a plaintive chorus. 'What'll we be?'
'Girl sailors. It's a ship of the future.'
The fat boy's idea sounded promising. They tried it out, but everyone
started squabbling and the game never got under way. Before long they were
all sitting around on the steps again, waiting.
Then Momo turned up, and everything changed.
The Argo's bow rose and fell, rose and fell, as she swiftly but
steadily steamed through the swell towards the South Coral Sea. No ship in
living memory had ever dared to sail these perilous waters, which abounded
with shoals, reefs and mysterious sea monsters. Most deadly of all was the
so-called Travelling Tornado, a waterspout that forever roamed this sea like
some cunning beast of prey. The waterspout's route was quite unpredictable,
and any ship caught up in its mighty embrace was promptly reduced to
matchwood.
Being a research vessel, of course, the Argo had been specially
designed to tackle the Travelling Tornado. Her hull was entirely constructed
of adamantium, a steel as tough and flexible as a sword blade, and had been
cast in one piece by a special process that dispensed with rivets and welded
seams.
For all that, few captains and crews would have had the courage to face
such incredible hazards. Captain Gordon of the Argo had that courage. He
gazed down proudly from the
25
bridge at the men and women of his crew, all of whom were experts in
their particular field. Beside him stood his first mate, Jim Ironside, an
old salt who had already survived a hundred and twenty-seven hurricanes.
Stationed on the sun-deck further aft were Professor Eisen-stein, the
expedition's senior scientist, and his assistants Moira and Sarah, who had
as much information stored in their prodigious memories as a whole reference
library. All three were hunched over their precision instruments, quietly
conferring in complicated scientific jargon.
Seated cross-legged a little apart from them was Momosan, a beautiful
native girl. Now and again the professor would consult her about some
special characteristic of the South Coral Sea, and she would reply in her
melodious Hula dialect, which he alone could understand.
The purpose of the expedition was to discover what caused the
Travelling Tornado and, if possible, make the sea safe for other ships by
putting an end to it. So far, however, there had been no sign of the tornado
and all was quiet.
Quite suddenly, the captain's thoughts were interrupted by a shout from
the lockout in the crow's-nest. 'Captain!' he called down, cupping his hands
around his mouth. 'Unless I'm crazy, there's a glass island dead ahead of
us!'
The captain and Jim Ironside promptly levelled their telescopes.
Professor Eisenstein and his two assistants hurried up, bursting with
curiosity, but the beautiful native girl calmly remained seated. The
peculiar customs of her tribe forbade her to seem inquisitive.
When they reached the glass island, as they very soon did, the
professor scrambled down a rope ladder and gingerly stepped ashore. The
surface was not only transparent but so slippery that he found it hard to
keep his footing.
The island was circular and about fifty feet across, with a sort of
dome in the centre. On reaching the summit, the professor could distinctly
make out a light flashing deep in
26
the heart of the island. He passed this information to tne others, who
were eagerly lining the ship's rail.
'From what you say,' said Moira, 'it must be a Blanc-mangius viscosus.'
'Perhaps,' Sarah chimed in, 'though it could equally be a Jellybeania
multicolorata.'[1]
Professor Eisenstein straightened up and adjusted his glasses. 'In my
opinion,' he said, 'we're dealing with a variety of the common Chocolatus
indigestibilis, but we can't be sure till we've examined it from below.'
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when three girl sailors, all
of whom were world-famous scuba divers and had already pulled on their
wetsuits, plunged over the side and vanished into the blue depths.
Nothing could be seen for a while but air bubbles. Then one of the
girls, Sandra, shot to the surface. 'It's a giant jellyfish!' she gasped.
'The other two are caught up in its tentacles and can't break loose. We must
save them before it's too late!' So saying, she disappeared again.
Without hesitation, a hundred frogmen led by Commander Franco,
nicknamed 'the Dolphin' because of his skill and experience, dived into the
sea. A tremendous battle raged beneath the surface, which soon became
covered with foam, but the gigantic creature's strength was such that not
even a hundred brave men could release the girls from its terrible embrace.
The professor turned to his assistants with a puzzled frown. 'Something
in these waters seems conducive to the growth of abnormally large sea
creatures,' he observed. 'What an interesting phenomenon!'
Meanwhile, Captain Gordon and his first mate had come to a decision.
'Back!' shouted Jim Ironside. 'All hands back on board! We'll have to
slice the monster in half - it's the girls' only hope.'
27
'Dolphin' Franco and his frogmen climbed back on board. After going
astern for a short distance, the Argo headed straight for the jellyfish at
maximum speed. The steel ship's bow was as sharp as a razor. Without a sound
- almost without a jolt - it sliced the huge creature in half. Although this
manoeuvre was fraught with danger for the girls entangled in its tentacles,
Jim Ironside had gauged his course to within a hair's breadth and steered
right between them. Instantly, the tentacles on each half of the jellyfish
went limp and lifeless, and the trapped girls managed to extricate
themselves.
They were welcomed back on board with joy. Professor Eisenstein hurried
over to them. 'It was all my fault,' he said. 'I should never have sent you
down there. Forgive me for risking your lives like that.'
'There's nothing to forgive. Professor,' one of the girls replied with
a carefree laugh. 'It's what we came for, after all.'
'Danger's our trade,' the other girl put in.
But there was no time to say more. Because of the rescue operation, the
captain and his crew had completely forgotten to keep watch on the sea. Only
now, in the nick of time, did they become aware that the Travelling Tornado
had appeared on the horizon and was racing towards them.
An immense roller tossed the Argo into the air, hurled her on to her
side, and sent her plummeting into a watery abyss. Any crew less courageous
and experienced than the Argo's would have been washed overboard or
paralysed with fear by this very first onslaught, but Captain Gordon stood
foursquare on his bridge as though nothing had happened, and his sailors
were just as unperturbed. Momosan, the beautiful native girl, being
unaccustomed to such storm-tossed seas, was the only person to take refuge
in a lifeboat.
The whole sky turned pitch-black within seconds. Shrieking and roaring,
the tornado flung itself at the Argo,
28
alternately catapulting her sky-high and sucking her down into
cavernous troughs. Its fury seemed to grow with every passing minute as it
strove in vain to crush the ship's steel hull.
The captain calmly gave orders to the first mate, who passed them on to
the crew in a stentorian voice. Everyone remained at his or her post.
Professor Eisenstein and his assistants, far from abandoning their
scientific instruments, used them to estimate where the eye of the storm
must be, for that was the course to steer. Captain Gordon secretly marvelled
at the composure of these scientists, who were not, after all, as closely
acquainted with the sea as himself and his
crew.
A shaft of lightning zigzagged down and struck the ship's hull,
electrifying it from stem to stern. Sparks flew whenever the crew touched
anything, but none of them worried. Everyone on board had spent months
training hard for just such an emergency. The only trouble was, the thinner
parts of the ship - cables and stanchions, for instance - began to glow like
the filament in an electric light bulb, and this made the crew's work harder
despite the rubber gloves they were wearing.
Fortunately, the glow was soon extinguished by a downpour heavier than
anyone on board, with the exception of Jim Ironside, had ever experienced.
There was no room for any air between the raindrops - they were too close
together - so they all had to put on masks and breathing apparatus.
Flashes of lightning and peals of thunder followed one another in quick
succession, the wind howled, and mast-high breakers deluged everything with
foam. With all engines running full ahead, the Argo inched her way forward
against the elemental might of the storm. Down below in the boiler rooms,
engineers and stokers made superhuman efforts. They had lashed themselves in
place with stout ropes so that the ship's violent pitching and tossing would
not hurl them into the open furnaces.
29
But when, at long last, the Argo and her crew reached the innermost eye
of the storm, what a sight confronted them!
Gyrating on the surface of the sea, which had been ironed flat as a
pancake by the sheer force of the storm, was a huge figure. Seemingly poised
on one leg, it grew wider the higher one looked, like a mountainous
humming-top rotating too fast for the eye to make it out in any detail.
'A Teetotum elasticumi' the professor exclaimed gleefully, holding on
to his glasses to prevent them from being washed off his nose by the rain.
'Maybe you'd care to translate that,' growled Jim Ironside. 'We're only
simple seafaring folk, and -'
'Don't bother the professor now,' Sarah broke in, 'or you'll ruin a
unique opportunity. This spinning-top creature probably dates from the
earliest phase of life on earth - it must be over a billion years old. The
one variety known today is so small you can only see it under a microscope.
It's sometimes found in tomato ketchup, or, even more rarely, in chewing
gum. A specimen as big as this may well be the only one in existence.'
'But we're here to eliminate it,' said the captain, shouting to make
himself heard above the sound of the storm. 'All right, Professor, tell us
how to stop that infernal thing.'
'Your guess is as good as mine,' the professor replied. 'We scientists
have never had a chance to study it.'
'Very well,' said the captain. 'We'll try a few shots at it and see
what happens.'
'What a shame,' the professor said sadly. 'Fancy shooting the sole
surviving specimen of a Teetotum elasticum\'
But the antifriction gun had already been trained on the giant
spinning-top.
'Fire!' ordered the captain.
The twin barrels emitted a tongue of flame a mile long. There was no
bang, of course, because an antifriction gun, as everyone knows, bombards
its target with proteins.
30
The flaming missiles streaked towards the Teetotum but were caught and
deflected. They circled the huge figure a few times, travelling ever faster,
ever higher, until they disappeared into the black clouds overhead.
'It's no use,' Captain Gordon shouted. 'We'll simply have to get
closer.'
'We can't, sir,' Jim Ironside shouted back. 'The engines are already
running full ahead, and that's only just enough to keep us from being blown
astern.'
'Any suggestions. Professor?' the captain asked, but Professor
Eisenstein merely shrugged. His assistants were equally devoid of ideas. It
looked as if the expedition would have to be abandoned as a failure.
Just then, someone tugged at the professor's sleeve. It was Momosan,
the beautiful native girl.
þìÁûÔøÁ,' she said, gesturing gracefully. 'Malumba oisitu sono. Erweini
samba insaitu lolobindra. Kramuna heu beni beni sadogau.'
The professor raised his eyebrows. 'Babaluf he said inquiringly. 'Didi
maha feinosi intu ge doinen malumba?'
The beautiful native girl nodded eagerly. 'Dodo um aufa shulamat va
vada,' she replied.
'ï" Ï",' said the professor, thoughtfully stroking his chin. 'What does
she say?' asked the first mate. 'She says,' explained the professor, 'that
her tribe has a very ancient song that would send the Travelling Tornado to
sleep -- or would, if anyone were brave enough to sing it to the creature.'
'Don't make me laugh!' growled Jim Ironside. 'Whoever heard of singing
a tornado to sleep?'
'What do you think. Professor?' asked Sarah. 'Is it scientifically
feasible?'
'One should always try to keep an open mind,' said the professor. 'Many
of these native traditions contain a grain of truth. The Teetotum elasticum
may be sensitive to certain
31
sonic vibrations. We simply know too little about its mode of
existence.'
'It can't do any harm,' the captain said firmly, 'so let's give it a
try. Tell her to carry on.'
The professor turned to Momosan and said, 'Malumba didi oisafal huna
huna, vavaduf
She nodded and began to sing a most peculiar song. It consisted of a
handful of notes repeated over and over again:
'Eni meni allubeni, vanna tai susura teni."
As she sang, she clapped her hands and pranced around in time to the
refrain.
The tune and the words were so easy to remember that the rest joined
in, one after another, until the entire crew was singing, clapping and
cavorting around in time to the music. Nothing could have been more
astonishing than to see the professor himself and that old sea dog, Jim
Ironside, singing and clapping like children in a playground.
And then, lo and behold, the thing they never thought would happen came
to pass: the Travelling Tornado rotated more and more slowly until it came
to a stop and began to sink beneath the waves. With a thunderous roar, the
sea closed over it. The storm died away, the rain ceased, the sky became
blue and cloudless, the waves subsided. The Argo lay motionless on the
glittering surface as if nothing but peace and tranquillity had ever reigned
there.
'Members of the crew,' said Captain Gordon, with an appreciative glance
at each in turn, 'we pulled it off!' The captain never wasted words, they
all knew, so they were doubly delighted when he added, 'I'm proud of you.'
'I think it must really have been raining,' said the girl who had
brought her little sister along. 'I'm soaked, that's for sure.'
32
She was right. The real storm had broken and moved on, and no one was
more surprised than she to find that she had completely forgotten to be
scared of the thunder and lightning while sailing aboard the Argo.
The children spent some time discussing their adventurous voyage and
swapping personal experiences. Then they said goodbye and went home to dry
off.
The only person slightly dissatisfied with the outcome of the game was
the boy who wore glasses. Before leaving, he said to Momo, 'I still think it
was a shame to sink the Teetotum elasticum, just like that. The last
surviving specimen of its kind, imagine! I do wish I could have taken a
closer look at it.'
But on one point they were all agreed: the games they played with Momo
were more fun than any others.
FOUR
Two Special Friends
Even when people have a great many friends, there are always one or two
they love best of all, and Momo was no exception.
She had two very special friends who came to see her every day and
shared what little they had with her. One was young and the other old, and
Momo could not have said which of them she loved more.
The old one's name was Beppo Roadsweeper. Although he must have had a
proper surname, everyone including Beppo himself used the nickname that
described his job, which was sweeping roads.
Beppo lived near the amphitheatre in a home-made shack built of bricks,
corrugated iron and tar paper. He was not much taller than Momo, being an
exceptionally small man and bent-backed into the bargain. He always kept his
head cocked to one side -- it was big, with a single tuft of white hair on
top -- and wore a diminutive pair of steel-rimmed spectacles on his nose.
Beppo was widely believed to be not quite right in the head. This was
because, when asked a question, he would give an amiable smile and say
nothing. If, after pondering the question, he felt it needed no answer, he
still said nothing. If it did, he would ponder what answer to give. He could
take as long as a couple of hours to reply, or even a whole day. By this
time the person who had asked the question would have forgotten what it was,
so Beppo's answer seemed peculiar in the extreme.
34
Only Momo was capable of waiting patiently enough to grasp his meaning.
She knew that Beppo took as long as he did because he was determined never
to say anything untrue. In his opinion, all the world's misfortunes stemmed
from the countless untruths, both deliberate and unintentional, which people
told because of haste or carelessness.
Every morning, long before daybreak, Beppo rode his squeaky old bicycle
to a big depot in town. There, he and his fellow roadsweepers waited in the
yard to be issued brooms and pushcarts and told which streets to sweep.
Beppo enjoyed these hours before dawn, when the city was still asleep, and
he did his work willingly and well. It was a useful job, and he knew it.
He swept his allotted streets slowly but steadily, drawing a deep
breath before every step and every stroke of the broom Step, breathe, sweep,
breathe, step, breathe, sweep ... Every so often he would pause a while,
staring thoughtfully into the distance. And then he would begin again: step,
breathe, sweep . . .
While progressing in this way, with a dirty street ahead of him and a
clean one behind, he often had grand ideas. They were ideas that couldn't
easily be put into words, though -ideas as hard to define as a
half-remembered scent or a colour seen in a dream. When sitting with Momo
after work, he would tell her his grand ideas, and her special way of
listening would loosen his tongue and bring the right words to his lips.
'You see, Momo,' he told her one day, 'it's like this. Sometimes, when
you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is
and feel sure you'll never get it swept.'
He gazed silently into space before continuing. 'And then you start to
hurry,' he went on. 'You work faster and faster, and every time you look up
there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even
harder, and you
35
panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop -and still
the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it.'
He pondered a while. Then he said, 'You must never think of the whole
street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the
next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next.
Nothing else.'
Again he paused for thought before adding, 'That way you enjoy your
work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that's
how it ought to be.'
There was another long silence. At last he went on, 'And all at once,
before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by
bit. What's more, you aren't out of breath.' He nodded to himself. 'That's
important, too,' he concluded.
Another time, when he came and sat down beside Momo, she could tell
from his silence that he was thinking hard and had something very special to
tell her. Suddenly he looked her in the eye and said, 'I recognized us.' It
was a long time before he spoke again. Then he said softly, 'It happens
sometimes - at midday, when everything's asleep in the heat of the sun. The
world goes transparent, like river water, if you know what I mean. You can
see the bottom.'
He nodded and relapsed into silence. Then he said, even more softly,
'There are other times, other ages, down there on the bottom.'
He pondered again for a long time, searching for the right words. They
seemed to elude him, because he suddenly said, in a perfectly normal tone of
voice, 'I was sweeping alongside the old city wall today. There are five
different-coloured stones in it. They're arranged like this, see?'
He drew a big ô in the dust with his forefinger and looked at it with
his head on one side. All at once he whispered, 'I recognized them - the
stones, I mean.'
After yet another long silence, he went on haltingly,
36
'They're stones from olden times, when me wan was first built. Many
hands helped to build the wall, but those stones were put there by two
particular people. They were meant as a sign, you see? I recognized it.'
Beppo rubbed his eyes. The next time he spoke, it was with something of
an effort. 'They looked quite different then, those two. Quite different.'
His concluding words sounded almost defiant. 'I recognized them, though,' he
said. 'They were you and me - I recognized us!'
People could hardly be blamed for smiling when they heard Beppo
Roadsweeper say such things. Many of them used to tap their heads
meaningfully behind his back, but Momo loved him and treasured every word he
uttered.
Momo's other special friend was not only young but the exact opposite
of Beppo in every respect. A handsome youth with dreamy eyes and an
incredible gift of the gab, he was always playing practical jokes and had
such a carefree, infectious laugh that people couldn't help joining in. His
first name was Girolamo, but everyone called him Guido.
Like Beppo, Guido took his surname from his job, though he didn't have
a proper job at all. One of his many unofficial activities was showing
tourists around the city, so he was universally known as Guido Guide. His
sole qualification for the job was a peaked cap, which he promptly clapped
on his head whenever any tourists strayed into the neighbourhood. Then,
wearing his most earnest expression, he would march up and offer to show
them the sights. If they were rash enough to accept, Guido let fly. He
bombarded his unfortunate listeners with such a multitude of made-up names,
dates and historical events that their heads started spinning. Some of them
saw through him and walked off in a huff, but the majority took his tales at
face value and dropped a few coins into his cap when he handed it around at
the end of a sightseeing tour.
37
Although Guide's neighbours used to chuckle at his flights of fancy,
they sometimes looked stern and remarked that it wasn't really right to take
good money for dreaming up a pack of lies.
'I'm only doing what poets do,' Guido would argue. 'Anyway, my
customers get their money's worth, don't they? ô give them exactly what they
want. Maybe you won't find my stories in any guidebook, but what's the
difference? Who knows if the stuff in the guidebooks isn't made up too, only
no one remembers any more. Besides, what do you mean by true and untrue? Who
can be sure what happened here a thousand or two thousand years ago? Can
ÕÏu?' The others admitted they couldn't.
'There you are, then!' Guido cried triumphantly. 'How can you call my
stories untrue? Things may have happened just the way I say they did, in
which case I've been telling the gospel truth.'
It was hard to counter an argument like that, especially when you were
up against a fast talker like Guido.
Unfortunately for him, however, not many tourists wanted to see the
amphitheatre, so he often had to turn his hand to other jobs. When the
occasion arose he would act as park-keeper, dog walker, deliverer of love
letters, mourner at funerals, witness at weddings, souvenir seller, cat's
meat man, and many other things besides.
But Guido dreamed of becoming rich and famous some-day. He planned to
live in a fabulously beautiful mansion set in spacious grounds, to eat off
gold plates and sleep between silken sheets. He pictured himself as
resplendent in his future fame as a kind of sun, and the rays of that sun
already warmed him in his poverty - from afar, as it were.
'I'll do it, too," he would exclaim when other people scoffed at his
dreams. 'You mark my words!'
Quite how he was going to do it, not even he could have
38
told them, for Guido held a low opinion of perseverance and hard work.
'What's so clever about working hard?' he said to Momo. 'Anyone can get
rich quick that way, but who wants to look like the people who've sold
themselves body and soul for money's sake? Well, they can count me out. Even
if there are times when I don't have the price of a cup of coffee, I'm still
me. Guide's still Guido!'
Although it seemed improbable that two people as dissimilar as Guido
Guide and Beppo Roadsweeper, with their different attitudes to life and the
world in general, should have become friends, they did. Strangely enough,
Beppo was the only person who never chided .Guido for his irresponsibility;
and, just as strangely, fast-talking Guido was the only person who never
poked fun at eccentric old Beppo. This, too, may have had something to do
with the way Momo listened to them both.
None of the three suspected that a shadow was soon to fall, not only
across their friendship but across the entire neighbourhood - an
ever-growing shadow that was already enfolding the city in its cold, dark
embrace. It advanced day by day like an invading army, silently and
surreptitiously, meeting no resistance because no one was really aware of
it.
But who exactly were the invaders? Even old Beppo, who saw much that
escaped other people, failed to notice the men in grey who busily roamed the
city in ever-increasing numbers. It wasn't that they were invisible; you
simply saw them without noticing them. They had an uncanny knack of making
themselves so inconspicuous that you either overlooked them or forgot ever
having seen them. The very fact that they had no need to conceal themselves
enabled them to go about their business in utter secrecy. Since nobody
noticed them, nobody stopped to wonder where they had come from or, indeed,
were still coming from, for their numbers continued to grow with every
passing day.
39
The men in grey drove through the streets in smart grey limousines,
haunted every building, frequented every restaurant. From time to time they
would jot something down in their little grey notebooks.
They were dressed from head to foot in grey suits the colour of a
spider's web. Even their faces were grey. They wore grey bowler hats and
smoked small grey cigars, and none of them went anywhere without a
steel-grey briefcase in his hand.
Guido Guide was as unaware as everyone else that several of these men
in grey had reconnoitred the amphitheatre, busily writing in their notebooks
as they did so.
Momo alone had caught sight of their shadowy figures peering over the
edge of the ruined building. They signalled to each other and put their
heads together as if conferring. Although she could hear nothing, Momo
suddenly shivered as she had never shivered before. She drew her baggy
jacket more tightly around her, but it did no good because the chill in the
air was no ordinary chill. Then the men in grey disappeared.
Momo heard no soft but majestic music that night, as she so often did,
but the next day life went on as usual. She thought no more about her weird
visitors, and it wasn't long before she, too, forgot them.
FIVE
Tall Stones
As time went by, Momo became absolutely indispensable to Guido. He
developed as deep an affection for the ragged little girl as any footloose,
fancy-free young man could have felt for any fellow creature.
Making up stories was his ruling passion, as we have already said, and
it was in this very respect that he underwent a change of which he himself
was fully aware. In the old days, not all of his stories had turned out
well. Either he ran short of ideas and was forced to repeat himself, or he
borrowed from some movie he'd seen or some newspaper article he'd read. His
stories had plodded along, so to speak, but Momo's friendship had suddenly
lent them wings.
Most of all, it was when Momo sat listening to him that his imagination
blossomed like a meadow in springtime. Children and grown-ups flocked to
hear him. He could now tell stories in episodes spanning days or even weeks,
and he never ran out of ideas. He listened to himself as enthralled as his
audience, never knowing where his imagination would lead him.
The next time some tourists visited the amphitheatre -Momo was sitting
on one of the steps nearby - he began as follows:
'Ladies and gentlemen, as I'm sure you all know, the Empress Harmonica
waged countless wars in defence of her realm, which was under constant
attack by the Goats and Hens.
41
'Having subdued these barbarian tribes for the umpteenth time, she was
so infuriated by their endless troublemaking that she threatened to
exterminate them, once and for all, unless their king. Raucous II, made
amends by sending her his goldfish.
'At that period, ladies and gentlemen, goldfish were still unknown in
these parts, but Empress Harmonica had heard from a traveller that King
Raucous owned a small fish which, when fully grown, would turn into solid
gold. The empress was determined to get her hands on this rare specimen.
'King Raucous laughed up his sleeve at this. He hid the real goldfish
under his bed and sent the empress a young whale in a bejewelled soup
tureen.
'The empress, who had imagined goldfish to be smaller, was rather
surprised at the creature's size. Never mind, she told herself, the bigger
the better - the bigger now, the more gold later on. There wasn't a hint of
gold about the fish - not even a glimmer - which worried her until King
Raucous's envoy explained that it wouldn't turn into gold until it had
stopped growing. Consequently, its growth should not be obstructed in any
way. Empress Harmonica pronounced herself satisfied with this explanation.
'The young fish grew bigger every day, consuming vast quantities of
food, but Empress Harmonica was a wealthy woman. It was given as much food
as it could put away, so it grew big and fat. Before long, the soup tureen
became too small for it.
'" The bigger the better," said the empress, and had it transferred to
her bathtub. Very soon it wouldn't fit into her bathtub either, so it was
installed in the imperial swimming pool. Transferring it to the pool was no
mean feat, because it now weighed as much as an ox. When one of the slaves
carrying it lost his footing the empress promptly had the wretched man
thrown to the lions, for the fish was now the apple of her eye.
42
'Harmonica spent many hours each day sitting beside the swimming pool,
watching the creature grow. All she could think of was the gold it would
make, because, as I'm sure you know, she led a very luxurious life and could
never have enough gold to meet her needs.
'"The bigger the better," she kept repeating to herself. These words
were proclaimed a national motto and inscribed in letters of bronze on every
public building.
'When even the imperial swimming pool became too cramped, as it
eventually did, Harmonica built the edifice whose ruins you see before you,
ladies and gentlemen. It was a huge, round aquarium filled to the brim with
water, and here the whale could at last stretch out in comfort.
'From now on the empress sat watching the great fish day and night -
watching and waiting for the moment when it would turn into gold. She no
longer trusted a soul, not even her slaves or relations, and dreaded that
the fish might be stolen from her. So here she sat, wasting away with fear
and worry, never closing her eyes, forever watching the fish as it blithely
splashed around without the least intention of turning into gold.
'Harmonica neglected her affairs of state more and more, which was just
what the Goats and Hens had been waiting for. Led by King Raucous, they
launched one final invasion and conquered the country in no time. They never
encountered a single enemy soldier, and the common folk didn't care one way
or the other who ruled them.
'When Empress Harmonica finally heard what had happened, she uttered
the well-known words, "Alas, if only I'd ..." The rest of the sentence is
lost in the mists of time, unfortunately. All we know for sure is that she
threw herself into this very aquarium and perished alongside the creature
that had blighted her hopes. King Raucous celebrated his victory by ordering
the whale to be slaughtered, and the entire population feasted on grilled
whale steaks for a week.
43
''Which only goes to show, ladies and gentlemen, how unwise it is to
believe all you're told.'
That concluded Guide's lecture. Most of his listeners were profoundly
impressed and surveyed the ruined amphitheatre with awe. Only one of them
was sceptical enough to strike a note of doubt. 'When is all this supposed
to have happened?' he asked.
'1 need hardly remind you,' said Guido, who was never at a loss for
words, 'that Empress Harmonica was a contemporary of the celebrated
philosopher Nauseous the Elder.'
Understandably reluctant to admit his total ignorance of when the
celebrated philosopher Nauseous the Elder lived, the sceptic merely nodded
and said, 'Ah yes, of course.'
All the other tourists were thoroughly satisfied. Their visit had been
well worthwhile, they declared, and no guide had ever presented them with
such a graphic and interesting account of ancient times. When Guido modestly
held out his peaked cap, they showed themselves correspondingly generous.
Even the sceptic dropped a few coins into it.
Guido, incidentally, had never told the same story twice since Momo's
arrival on the scene; he would have found that far too boring. When Momo was
in the audience a floodgate seemed to open inside him, releasing a torrent
of new ideas that bubbled forth without his ever having to think twice.
On the contrary, he often had to restrain himself from going too far,
as he did the day his services were enlisted by two elderly American ladies
whose blood he curdled with the following tale:
'It is, of course, common knowledge, even in your own fair,
freedom-loving land, dear ladies, that the cruel tyrant Marxen-tius
Communis, nicknamed "the Red", resolved to mould the world to fit his own
ideas. Try as he might, however, he found that people refused to change
their ways and remained much the same as they always had been. Towards the
end of his life, Marxentius Communis went mad. The ancient world had no
44
psychiatrists capable of curing such mental disorders, as I'm sure you
know, so the tyrant continued to rave unchecked. He eventually took it into
his head to leave the existing world to its own devices and create a
brand-new world of his own.
'He therefore decreed the construction of a globe exactly the same size
as the old one, complete with perfect replicas of everything in it - every
building and tree, every mountain, river and sea. The entire population of
the earth was compelled, on pain of death, to assist in this vast project.
'First they built the base on which the huge new globe would rest --
and the remains of that base, dear ladies, are what you now see before you.
'Then they started to construct the globe itself, a gigantic sphere as
big as the earth. Once this sphere had been completed, it was furnished with
perfect copies of everything on earth.
'The sphere used up vast quantities of building materials, of course,
and these could be taken only from the earth itself. So the earth got
smaller and smaller while the sphere got bigger and bigger.
'By the time the new world was finished, every last little scrap of the
old world had been carted away. What was more, the whole of mankind had
naturally been obliged to move to the new world because the old one was all
used up. When it dawned on Marxentius Communis that, despite all his
efforts, everything was just as it had been, he buried his head in his toga
and tottered off. Where to, no one knows.
'So you see, ladies, this craterlike depression in the ruins before you
used to be the dividing line between the old world and the new. In other
words, you must picture everything upside down.'
The American dowagers turned pale, and one of them said in a quavering
voice, 'But what became of Marxentius Com-munis's world?'
'Why, you're standing on it right now,' Guido told her. 'Our world,
ladies, is his!'
45
The two old things let out a squawk of terror and took to their heels.
This time, Guido held out his cap in vain.
Guide's favourite pastime, though, was telling stories to Momo on her
own, with no one else around. They were fairy tales, mostly, because Momo
liked those best, and they were about Momo and Guido themselves. Being
intended just for the two of them, they sounded quite different from any of
the other stories Guido told.
One fine, warm evening the pair of them were sitting quietly, side by
side, on the topmost tier of stone steps. The first stars were already
twinkling in the sky, and a big, silvery moon was climbing above the dark
silhouettes of the pine trees.
'Will you tell me a story?' Momo asked softly. 'All right,' said Guido.
'What about?' 'Best of all I'd like it to be about us,' Momo said. Guido
thought a while. Then he said, 'What shall we call it?' 'How about The Tale
of the Magic Mirror?' Guido nodded thoughtfully. 'Sounds promising,' he
said. 'Let's see how it turns out.' And he put his arm around Momo and
began:
'Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess named Momo, who
dressed in silk and satin and lived high above the world on a snow-clad
mountain-top, in a palace built of stained glass. She had everything her
heart could desire. Nothing but the choicest food and wine ever passed her
lips. She reclined on silken cushions and sat on ivory chairs. She had
everything, as I say, but she was all alone.
'All the people and things around her - her footmen and
ladies-in-waiting, her dogs and cats and birds, even her flowers - were
merely reflections.
'The fact was. Princess Momo had a magic mirror, big and round and made
of the finest silver. Every day and every night she used to send it out into
the world, and the big round mirror soared over land and sea, town and
countryside.
46
People who saw it weren't a bit surprised. All they ever said was, "Ah,
there's the moon."
'Well, every time the magic mirror came back to the princess it would
empty out the reflections it had collected on its travels, beautiful and
ugly, interesting and dull, as the case might be. The princess picked out
the ones she liked best. The others she simply threw into a stream, and
quicker than the speed of thought these discarded reflections sped back to
their owners along the waterways of the earth. That's why you'll find your
own reflection looking at you whenever you bend over a stream or a pool of
water.
'I forgot to mention that Princess Momo was immortal. Why? Because
she'd never seen her own reflection in the magic mirror, and anyone who saw
his own reflection in it became mortal at once. Being well aware of this,
Princess Momo took care not to do so. She'd always been quite content to
live and play with her many other reflections.
'One day, however, the magic mirror brought her a reflection that
appealed to her more than any other. It was the reflection of a young
prince. As soon as she saw it, she longed to meet him face to face. How was
she to set about it, though? She didn't know where he lived or who he was -
she didn't even know his name.
'For want of a better idea, she decided to look into the magic mirror
after all, thinking that it might carry her own reflection to the prince.
There was a chance that he might be looking up at the sky when the mirror
floated past and would see her in it. Perhaps he would follow the mirror
back to the palace and find her there.
'So she gazed into the mirror, long and hard, and sent it off around
the world with her reflection. By so doing, of course, she lost her
immortality.
'Before saying what happened to her next, I must tell you something
about the prince.
47
'His name was Girolamo, and he ruled a great kingdom of his own
creation. This kingdom was situated neither in the present nor the past, but
always one day ahead in the future, which was why it was called Futuria.
Everyone who dwelt there loved and admired the prince.
' "Your Royal Highness," the prince's advisers told him one day, "it's
time you got married."
'The prince had no objection, so Futuria's loveliest young ladies were
brought to the palace for him to choose from. They all made themselves look
as beautiful as possible, because each of them naturally wanted his choice
to fall on her.
'Among them, however, was a wicked fairy who had managed to sneak into
the palace. The blood that ran in her veins was green and cold, not red and
warm, but nobody noticed this because she had painted her face so skilfully.
'When the Prince of Futuria entered the great, golden throne room she
quickly muttered such a potent spell that poor Girolamo had eyes for no one
but her. He found her so incomparably beautiful that he asked her on the
spot if she would be his wife.
'"With pleasure," hissed the wicked fairy, "but only on one condition."
'"Name it," the prince said promptly, without a second thought.
'"Very well," said the wicked fairy, and she smiled so sweetly that the
poor prince's head swam. "For one whole year, you must never look up at the
moon in the sky. If you do, you will instantly lose all your royal
possessions. You will forget who you really are and find yourself
transported to the land of Presentia, where you will lead the life of a
poor, unknown wretch. Do you accept my terms?"
' "If that's all you ask," cried Prince Girolamo, "what could be
easier!"
'Meanwhile, Princess Momo had been waiting in vain for the prince to
appear, so she resolved to venture out into the
48
world and look for him. She let all her reflections go and, leaving her
stained-glass palace behind, set off down the snow-clad mountainside in her
dainty little slippers. She roamed the world until she came to Presentia, by
which time her slippers were worn out and she had to go barefoot, but the
magic mirror bearing her reflection continued to soar overhead.
'One night, while Prince Girolamo was sitting on the roof of his golden
palace, playing checkers with the fairy whose blood was cold and green, he
felt a little drop of moisture on his hand.
' "Ah," said the green-blooded fairy, "it's starting to rain."
'"It can't be," said the prince. "There isn't a cloud in the sky."
'And he looked up, straight into the big silver mirror soaring
overhead, and saw from Princess Momo's reflection that she was weeping and
that one of her tears had fallen on to his hand. And at that instant he
realized that the fairy had tricked him - that she wasn't beautiful at all
and had cold, green blood in her veins. His true love, he realized, was
Princess Momo.
'"You've broken your promise," snapped the green-blooded fairy,
scowling so hideously that she looked like a snake, "and now you must pay
the price!"
'And then, while Prince Girolamo sat there as though paralysed, she
reached inside him with her long, green fingers and tied a knot in his
heart. Instantly forgetting that he was the Prince of Futuria, he slunk out
of his palace like a thief in the night and wandered far and wide till he
came to Presentia, where he took the name Guido and lived a life of poverty
and obscurity. All he'd brought with him was Princess Momo's reflection from
the magic mirror, which was blank from then on.
'By now Princess Momo had abandoned the ragged remains of her silk and
satin gown. She wore a patchwork
49
dress and a man's cast-off jacket, far too big for her, and was living
in an ancient ruin.
'When the two of them met there one fine day. Princess Momo failed to
recognize poor, good-for-nothing Guido as the Prince of Futuria. Guido
didn't recognize her either, because she no longer looked like a princess,
but they became companions in misfortune and a source of consolation to each
other.
'One evening when the magic mirror, now blank, was floating across the
sky, Guido took out Memo's reflection and showed it to her. Crumpled and
faded though it was, the princess immediately recognized it as her own - the
one she'd sent soaring around the world. And then, as she peered more
closely at the poor wretch beside her, she saw he was the long-sought prince
for whose sake she had renounced her immortality.
'She told him the whole story, but Guido sadly shook his head. "Your
words, mean nothing to me," he said. "There's a knot in my heart, and it
stops me remembering."
'So Princess Momo laid her hand on his breast and untied the knot in
his heart with case, and Prince Girolamo suddenly remembered who he was and
where he came from. And he took Princess Momo by the hand and led her far,
tar away, to the distant land of Futuria.'
They both sat silent for a while when Guido had finished. Then Momo
asked, 'Did they ever get married?'
'I think so,' said Guido, '- later on.'
'And are they dead now?'
'No,' Guido said firmly, 'I happen to know that for a fact. The magic
mirror only made you mortal if you looked into it on your own. If two people
looked into it together, it made them immortal again, and that's what those
two did.'
The big, silver moon floated high above the dark pine
50
trees, bathing the ruin's ancient stonework in its mysterious light.
Momo and Guido sat there side by side, gazing up at it for a long time and
feeling quite certain that, if only for the space of that enchanted moment,
the pair of them were immortal.
* PART TWO *
The Men in Grey
SIX
The Timesaving Bank.
Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by
each of us and known to all, it seldom rates a second thought. That mystery,
which -most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time.
Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little
because we all know that an hour can seem an eternity or pass in a flash,
according to how we spend it.
Time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart.
The men in grey knew this better than anyone. Nobody knew the value of
an hour or a minute, or even of a single second, as well as they. They were
experts on time just as leeches are experts on blood, and they acted
accordingly.
They had designs on people's time - long-term and well-laid plans of
their own. What mattered most to them was that no one should become aware of
their activities. They had surreptitiously installed themselves in the city.
Now, step by step and day by day, they were secretly invading its
inhabitants' lives and taking them over.
They knew the identity of every person likely to further their plans
long before that person had any inkling of it. They waited for the ideal
moment to entrap him, and they saw to it that the ideal moment came.
One such person was Mr Figaro, the barber. Though not by any means a
high-class hairdresser, he was well respected in the neighbourhood. Neither
rich nor poor, he owned a small barbershop in the centre of town and
employed an apprentice.
55
One day, Mr Figaro was standing at the door of his shop waiting for
customers. It was the apprentice's day off, so he was alone. Raindrops were
spattering the pavement and the sky was bleak and dreary - as bleak and
dreary as Mr Figaro's mood.
'Life's passing me by,' he told himself, 'and what am I getting out of
it? Wielding a pair of scissors, chatting to customers, lathering their
faces - is that the most I can expect? When I'm dead, it'll be as if I'd
never existed.'
In fact, Mr Figaro had no objection at all to chatting. He liked to air
his opinions and hear what his customers thought of them. He had no
objection to wielding a pair of scissors or lathering faces, either. He
genuinely enjoyed his work and knew he did it well. Few barbers could shave
the underside of a man's chin as smoothly against the lie of the stubble,
but there were times when none of this seemed to matter.
'I'm an utter failure,' thought Mr Figaro. 'I mean, what do I amount
to? A small-time barber, that's all. If only I could lead the right kind of
life, I'd be a different person altogether.'
Exactly what form the right kind of life should take, Mr Figaro wasn't
sure. He vaguely pictured it as a distinguished and affluent existence such
as he was always reading about in glossy magazines.
'The trouble is,' he thought sourly, 'my work leaves me no time for
that sort of thing, and you need time for the right kind of life. You've got
to be free, but I'm a lifelong prisoner of scissors, lather and chitchat.'
At that moment a smart grey limousine pulled up right outside Mr
Figaro's barbershop. A grey-suited man got out and walked in. He deposited
his grey briefcase on the ledge in front of the mirror, hung his grey bowler
on the hat-rack, sat down in the barber's chair, produced a grey notebook
from his breast pocket and started leafing through it, puffing meanwhile at
a small grey cigar.
56
Mr Figaro shut the street door because he suddenly found it strangely
chilly in his little shop.
'What's it to be,' he asked, 'shave or haircut?' Even as he spoke, he
cursed himself for being so tactless: the stranger was as bald as an egg.
The man in grey didn't smile. 'Neither,' he replied in a peculiarly
flat and expressionless voice - a grey voice, so to speak. 'I'm from the
Timesaving Bank. Permit me to introduce myself: Agent No. XYQ/384/b. We hear
you wish to open an account with us.'
'That's news to me,' said Mr Figaro. 'To be honest, I didn't even know
such a bank existed.'
'Well, you know now,' the agent said crisply. He consulted his little
grey notebook. 'Your name is Figaro, isn't it?'
'Correct,' said Mr Figaro. 'That's me.'
'Then I've come to the right address,' said the man in grey, shutting
his notebook with a snap. 'You're on our list of applicants.'
'How come?' asked Mr Figaro, who was still at a loss.
'It's like this, my dear sir,' said the man in grey. 'You're wasting
your life cutting hair, lathering faces and swapping idle chitchat. When
you're dead, it'll be as if you'd never existed. If you only had the time to
lead the right kind of life, you'd be quite a different person. Time is all
you need, right?'
'That's just what I was thinking a moment ago,' mumbled Mr Figaro, and
he shivered because it was getting colder and colder in spite of the door
being shut.
'You see!' said the man in grey, puffing contentedly at his small
cigar. 'You need more time, but how are you going to find it? By saving it,
of course. You, Mr Figaro, are wasting time in a totally irresponsible way.
Let me prove it to you by simple arithmetic. There are sixty seconds in a
minute and sixty minutes in an hour - are you with me so far?'
'Of course,' said Mr Figaro.
57
Agent No. XY Q/384/b produced a piece of grey chalk and scrawled some
figures on the mirror.
'Sixty times sixty is three thousand six hundred, which makes three
thousand six hundred seconds in an hour. There are twenty-four hours in a
day, so multiply three thousand six hundred by twenty-four to find the
number of seconds in a day and you arrive at a figure of eighty-six thousand
four hundred. There are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, as you
know, which makes thirty-one million five hundred and thirty-six thousand
seconds in a year, or three hundred and fifteen million three hundred and
sixty thousand seconds in ten years. How long do you reckon you'll live, Mr
Figaro?'
'Well,' stammered Mr Figaro, thoroughly disconcerted by now, 'I hope to
live to seventy or eighty, God willing.'
'Very well,' pursued the man in grey. 'Let's call it seventy, to be on
the safe side. Multiply three hundred and fifteen million three hundred and
sixty thousand by seven and you get a grand total of two billion two hundred
and seven million five hundred and twenty thousand seconds.' He chalked this
figure up on the mirror in outsize numerals -- 2,207,520,000 -- and
underlined it several times. 'That, Mr Figaro, is the extent of the capital
at your disposal.'
Mr Figaro gulped and wiped his brow, feeling quite dizzy. He'd never
realized how rich he was.
'Yes,' said the agent, nodding and puffing at his small grey cigar,
'it's an impressive figure, isn't it? But let's continue. How old are you
now, Mr Figaro?'
'Forty-two,' the barber mumbled. He suddenly felt guilty, as if he'd
committed a fraud of some kind.
'And how long do you sleep at night, on average?' 'Around eight hours,'
Mr Figaro admitted. The agent did some lightning calculations. The squeak of
his chalk as it raced across the mirror set Mr Figaro's teeth on edge.
58
'Forty-two years at eight hours a night makes four hundred and
forty-one million five hundred and four thousand seconds . . . We'll have to
write that off, I'm afraid. How much of the day do you devote to work, Mr
Figaro?'
'Another eight hours or so,' Mr Figaro said, apologetically.
'Then we'll have to write off the same amount again,' the agent pursued
relentlessly. 'You also spend a certain proportion of the day eating. How
many hours would you say, counting all meals?'
'I don't exactly know,* Mr Figaro said nervously. 'Two hours, maybe.'
'That sounds on the low side to me,' said the agent, 'but assuming it's
correct we get a figure of one hundred and ten million three hundred and
seventy-six thousand seconds in forty-two years. To continue: you live alone
with your elderly mother, as we know. You spend a good hour with the old
woman every day, that's to say, you sit and talk to her although she's so
deaf she can scarcely hear a word. That counts as more time wasted -
fifty-five million one hundred and eighty-eight thousand seconds, to be
precise. You also keep a budgerigar, a needless extravagance whose demands
on your time amount to fifteen minutes a day, or thirteen million seven
hundred and ninety-seven thousand seconds in forty-two years.'
'B-but -' Mr Figaro broke in, imploringly. 'Don't interrupt!' snapped
the agent, his chalk racing faster and faster across the mirror. 'Your
mother's arthritic as well as deaf, so you have to do most of the housework.
You go shopping, clean shoes and perform other chores of a similar nature.
How much time does that consume daily?' 'An hour, maybe, but -'
'So you've already squandered another fifty-five million one hundred
and eighty-eight thousand seconds, Mr Figaro. We also know you go to the
cinema once a week, sing with a social club once a week, go drinking twice a
week, and spend
59
the rest of your evenings reading or gossiping with friends. In short,
you devote some three hours a day to useless pastimes that have lost you
another one hundred and sixty-five million five hundred and sixty-four
thousand seconds.' The agent broke off. 'What's the matter, Mr Figaro,
aren't you feeling well?'
'No,' said the barber,'- yes, I mean. Please excuse me . ..' 'I'm
almost through,' said the agent. 'First, though, we must touch on a rather
personal aspect of your life - your little secret, if you know what I mean.'
Mr Figaro was so cold that his teeth had started to chatter.
'So you know about that, too?' he muttered feebly. 'I didn't think
anyone knew except me and Miss Daria -'
'There's no room for secrets in the world of today,' his inquisitor
broke in. 'Look at the matter rationally and realistically Mr Figaro, and
answer me one thing: Do you plan to marry Miss Daria?'
'No-no,' said Mr Figaro, 'I couldn't do that...' 'Quite so,' said the
man in grey. 'Being paralysed from the waist down, she'll have to spend the
rest of her life in a wheelchair, yet you visit her every day for half an
hour and take her flowers. Why?'
'She's always so pleased to see me,' Mr Figaro replied, close to tears.
'But looked at objectively, from your own point of view,' said the
agent, 'it's time wasted - twenty-seven million five hundred and ninety-four
thousand seconds of it, to date. Furthermore, if we allow for your habit of
sitting at the window for a quarter of an hour every night, musing on the
day's events, we have to write off yet another thirteen million seven
hundred and ninety-seven thousand seconds. Very well, let's see how much
time that makes in all.'
He drew a line under the long column of figures and added them up with
the rapidity of a computer.
60
The sum on the mirror now looked like this:
Sleep
441,504,000
seconds
Work
441,504,000
do.
Meals
110,376,000
do.
Mother
55,188,000
do.
Budgerigar
13,797,000
do.
Shopping, etc.
55,188,000
do.
Friends, social club, etc.
165,564,000
do.
Miss Daria
27,594,000
do.
Daydreaming
13,797,000
do.
Grand Total 1,324,512,000 seconds
'And that figure,' said the man in grey, rapping the mirror with his
chalk so sharply that it sounded like a burst of machine-gun fire, '- that
figure represents the time you've wasted up to now. What do you say to that,
Mr Figaro?'
Mr Figaro said nothing. He slumped into a chair in the corner of the
shop and mopped his brow with a handkerchief, sweating hard despite the icy
atmosphere.
The man in grey nodded gravely. 'Yes, you're quite right, my dear sir,
you've used up more than half of your original capital. Now let's see how
much that leaves of your forty-two years. One year is thirty-one million
five hundred and thirty-six thousand seconds, and that, multiplied by
forty-two, comes to one billion three hundred and twenty-four million five
hundred and twelve thousand seconds.'
Beneath the previous total he wrote:
Total time available Time lost to date
1,324,512,000 seconds 1,324,512,000 do.
Balance 0,000,000,000 seconds
Then he pocketed his chalk and waited for the sight of all the zeros to
take effect, which they did.
'So that's all my life amounts to,' thought Mr Figaro,
61
absolutely shattered. He was so impressed by the elaborate sum, which
had come out perfectly, that he was ready to accept whatever advice the
stranger had to offer. It was one of the tricks the men in grey used to dupe
prospective customers.
Agent No. XYQ/384/b broke the silence. 'Can you really afford to go on
like this?' he said blandly. 'Wouldn't you prefer to start saving right
away, Mr Figaro?' Mr Figaro nodded mutely, blue-lipped with cold. 'For
example,' came the agent's grey voice in his ear, 'if you'd started saving
even one hour a day twenty years ago, you'd now have a credit balance of
twenty-six million two hundred and eighty thousand seconds. Two hours a day
would have saved you twice that amount, of course, or fifty-two million five
hundred and sixty thousand. And I ask you, Mr Figaro, what are two measly
little hours in comparison with a sum of that magnitude?'
'Nothing!' cried Mr Figaro. 'A mere flea bite!' 'I'm glad you agree,'
the agent said smoothly. 'And if we calculate how much you could have saved
that way after another twenty years, we arrive at the handsome figure of one
hundred and five million one hundred and twenty thousand seconds. And the
whole of that capital, Mr Figaro, would have been freely available to you at
the age of sixty-two!' 'F-fantastic!' stammered Mr Figaro, wide-eyed with
awe. 'But that's not all,' the agent pursued. 'The best is yet to come. The
Timesaving Bank not only takes care of the time you save, it pays you
interest on it as well. In other words, you end up with more than you put
in.'
'How much more?' Mr Figaro asked breathlessly. 'That's up to you,' the
agent told him. 'It depends how much time you save and how long you leave it
on deposit with us.'
'Leave it on deposit?' said Mr Figaro. 'How do you mean?' 'It's quite
simple. If you don't withdraw the time you save for five years, we credit
you with the same amount again.
62
Your savings double every five years, do you follow? They're worth four
times as much after ten years, eight times as much after fifteen, and so on.
Say you'd started saving a mere two hours a day twenty years ago: by your
sixty-second birthday, or after forty years in all, you'd have had two
hundred and fifty-six times as much in the bank as you originally put in.
That would mean a credit balance of twenty-six billion nine hundred and ten
million seven hundred and twenty thousand seconds.'
And the agent produced his chalk again and wrote the figure on the
mirror: 26,910,720,000.
'You can see for yourself, Mr Figaro,' he went on, smiling thinly for
the first time. 'You'd have accumulated over ten times your entire life
span, just by saving a couple of hours a day for forty years. If that's not
a paying proposition, I don't know what is.'
'You're right,' Mr Figaro said wearily, 'it certainly is. What a fool I
was not to start saving time years ago! It didn't dawn on me till now, and I
have to admit I'm appalled.'
'No need to be,' the man in grey said soothingly,'- none at all. It's
never too late to save time. You can start today, if you want to.'
'Of course I want to!' exclaimed Mr Figaro. 'What do I have to do?'
The agent raised his eyebrows. 'Surely you know how to save time, my
dear sir? Work faster, for instance, and stick to essentials. Spend only
fifteen minutes on each customer, instead of the usual half-hour, and avoid
time-wasting conversations. Reduce the hour you spend with your mother by
half. Better still, put her in a nice, cheap old folks' home, where someone
else can look after her - that'll save you a whole hour a day. Get rid of
that useless budgerigar. See Miss Daria once every two weeks, if at all.
Give up your fifteen-minute review of the day's events. Above all, don't
squander so much of your precious time on singing, reading
63
and hobnobbing with your so-called friends. Incidentally, I'd also
advise you to hang a really accurate clock on the wall so you can time your
apprentice to the nearest minute.'
'Fine,' said Mr Figaro. 'I can manage all that, but what about the time
I save? Do I have to pay it in, and if so where, or should I keep it
somewhere safe till you collect it? How does the system operate?'
The man in grey gave another thin-lipped smile. 'Don't worry, we'll
take care of that. Rest assured, we won't mislay a single second of the time
you save. You'll find you haven't any left over.'
'All right,' Mr Figaro said dazedly, 'I'll take your word for it.'
'You can do so with complete confidence, my dear sir.' The agent rose
to his feet. 'And now, permit me to welcome you to the ranks of the great
timesaving movement. You're a truly modern and progressive member of the
community, Mr Figaro. 1 congratulate you.' So saying, he picked up his hat
and briefcase.
'One moment,' said Mr Figaro. 'Shouldn't there be some form of
contract? Oughtn't I to sign something? Don't I get a policy of some kind?'
Agent No. XY Q/384/b, who had already reached the door, turned and
regarded Mr Pigaro with faint annoyance. 'What on earth for?' he demanded.
'Timesaving can't be compared with any other kind of saving - it calls for
absolute trust on both sides. Your word is good enough for us, especially as
you can't go back on it. We'll take care of your savings, though how much
you save is entirely up to you - we never bring pressure to bear on our
customers. Good day, Mr Figaro.'
On that note, the agent climbed into his smart grey car and purred off.
Mr Figaro gazed after him, kneading his brow. Although he was gradually
becoming warmer again, he felt sick and
64
wretched. The air still reeked of smoke from the agent's cigar, a dense
blue haze that was slow to disperse.
Not till the smoke had finally gone did Mr Figaro begin to feel better.
But as it faded, so did the figures chalked up on the mirror, and by the
time they had vanished altogether Mr Figaro's recollection of his visitor
had vanished too. He forgot the man in grey but not his new resolution,
which he believed to be his alone. The determination to save time now so as
to be able to begin a new life sometime in the future had embedded itself in
his soul like a poisoned arrow.
When the first customer of the day turned up, Mr Figaro gave him a
surly reception. By doing no more than was absolutely necessary and keeping
his mouth shut, he got through in twenty minutes instead of the usual
thirty.
From now on he subjected every customer to the same treatment. Although
he ceased to enjoy his work, that was of secondary importance. He engaged
two assistants in addition to his apprentice and watched them like a hawk to
see they didn't waste a moment. Every move they made was geared to a precise
timetable, in accordance with the notice that now adorned the wall of the
barbershop: TIME SAVED IS TIME DOUBLED!
Mr Figaro wrote Miss Daria a brief, businesslike note regretting that
pressure of work would prevent him from seeing her in the future. His
budgerigar he sold to a pet shop. As for his mother, he put her in an
inexpensive old folks' home and visited her once a month. In the belief that
the grey stranger's recommendations were his own decisions, he carried them
out to the letter.
Meanwhile, he was becoming increasingly restless and irritable. The odd
thing was that, no matter how much time he saved, he never had any to spare;
in some mysterious way, it simply vanished. Imperceptibly at first, but then
quite unmistakably, his days grew shorter and shorter. Almost before he knew
it, another week had gone by, and
65
another month, and another year, and another and another.
Having no recollection of the grey stranger's visit, Mr Figaro should
seriously have asked himself where all his time was going, but that was a
question never considered by him or any other timesaver. Something in the
nature of a blind obsession had taken hold of Lim, and when he realized to
his horror that his days were flying by faster and faster, as he
occasionally did, it only reinforced his grim determination to save time.
Many other inhabitants of the city were similarly afflicted. Every day,
more and more people took to saving time, and the more they did so the more
they were copied by others -even by those who had no real desire to join in
but felt obliged to.
Radio, television and newspapers daily advertised and extolled the
merits of new, timesaving gadgets that would one day leave people free to
live the 'right' kind of life. Walls and billboards were plastered with
posters depicting scenes of happiness and prosperity. Splashed across them
in fluorescent lettering were slogans such as:
TIMESAVERS ARE GOING PLACES FAST! THE FUTURE BELONGS TO TIMESAVERS!
MAKE MORE OF YOUR LIFE - SAVE TIME!
The real picture, however, was very different. Admittedly, timesavers
were better dressed than the people who lived near the old amphitheatre.
They earned more money and had more to spend, but they looked tired,
disgruntled and sour, and there was an unfriendly light in their eyes.
They'd never heard the phrase 'Why not go and see Momo?' nor did they have
anyone to listen to them in a way that would make them reasonable or
conciliatory, let alone happy. Even had they known of such a person, they
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would have been highly unlikely to pay him or her a visit unless the
whole affair could be dealt with in five minutes flat, or they would have
considered it a waste of time. In their view, even leisure time had to be
used to the full, so as to extract the maximum of entertainment and
relaxation with the minimum of delay.
Whatever the occasion, whether solemn or joyous, time-savers could no
longer celebrate it properly. Daydreaming they regarded almost as a criminal
offence. What they could endure least of all, however, was silence, for when
silence fell they became terrified by the realization of what was happening
to their lives. And so, whenever silence threatened to descend, they made a
noise. It wasn't a happy sound, of course, like the hubbub in a children's
playground, but an angry, ill-tempered din that grew louder every day.
It had ceased to matter that people should enjoy their work and take
pride in it; on the contrary, enjoyment merely slowed them down. All that
mattered was to get through as much work as possible in the shortest
possible time, so notices to that effect were prominently displayed in every
factory and office building. They read:
TIME IS PRECIOUS - DON'T WASTE IT! or:
TIME IS MONEY - SAVE IT!
Similar notices hung above business executives' desks and in
boardrooms, in doctors' consulting rooms, shops, restaurants and department
stores - even in schools and kindergartens. No one was left out.
Last but not least, the appearance of the city itself changed more and
more. Old buildings were pulled down and replaced with modern ones devoid of
all the things that were now thought superfluous. No architect troubled to
design houses that suited the people who were to live in them, because that
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would have meant building a whole range of different houses. It was far
cheaper and, above all, more timesaving to make them identical.
Huge modem housing developments sprang up on the city's northern
outskirts - endless rows of multi-storeyed tenements as indistinguishable as
peas in a pod. And because the buildings all looked alike, so, of course,
did the streets. They grew steadily longer, stretching away to the horizon
in dead straight lines and turning the countryside into a disciplined
desert. The lives of the people who inhabited this desert followed a similar
pattern: they ran dead straight for as far as the eye could see. Everything
in them was carefully planned and programmed, down to the last move and the
last moment of time.
People never seemed to notice that, by saving time, they were losing
something else. No one cared to admit that life was becoming ever poorer,
bleaker and more monotonous.
The ones who felt this most keenly were the children, because no one
had time for them any more.
But time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. And the
more people saved, the less they had.
SEVEN
The Visitor
'I don't know,' Momo said one day. 'Seems to me our old friends come
here less and less often than they used to. I haven't seen some of them for
ages.'
She was sitting between Guido Guide and Beppo Road-sweeper on the
grass-grown steps of the ruined amphitheatre, watching the sun go down.
'Yes,' Guido said pensively, 'it's the same with me. Fewer and fewer
people listen to my stories. It isn't like it used to be. Something's
wrong.'
'But what?' said Momo.
Guido shrugged, spat on the slate he'd been writing on and thoughtfully
rubbed the letters out. Beppo had found the slate in a garbage can some
weeks before and presented it to Momo. It wasn't a new one, of course, and
it had a big crack down the middle, but it was quite usable all the same.
Guido had been teaching Momo her alphabet ever since. Momo had a very good
memory, so she could already read quite well, though her writing was coming
on more slowly.
Beppo, who had been pondering Momo's question, nodded and said, 'You