Михаил Энде. Момо (engl)
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...'m only doing what poets do,' Guido would argue. 'Anyway, mycustomers get their money's worth, don't they? Т 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
уоu?' 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
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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.
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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.
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'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.
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'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.
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''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
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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!'
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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.
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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.
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'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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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'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.
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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.
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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
66
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
67
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...
