16. Momo
Michael Ende is probably best known for his book The Neverending Story and it is unfortunate that this is one of only a handful of his books available in English. In his native Germany, Ende was a well-known children's book author with many more titles to his name. Momo was translated into English, but this translation is no longer in print in the United States. Hence, for Americans, this is most definitely a lost book.
The story is simple enough; Momo, a little homeless girl, moves into the ruins of an ancient amphitheater is on the outskirts of a city. The neighborhood decides to take care of her by bringing her food and furnishing her rooms, and she takes care of them in turn by listening to them. Not just listening to them talk about their problems, but actually hearing the content of what they say. This has magical effects; people think of solutions to their problems, enemies discover the roots of their conflict, and Momo hears beauty in even the random sounds of the amphitheater at nightfall. Children flock to Momo every day because they find that a willing listener can turn their make-believes into fantastical (not to mention very amusing) realities. Hence, Momo becomes one of the most beloved members of the community.
The first fifty pages of the book illustrate Momo's world before the conflict. It introduces the reader to Momo's two closest friends, Guido Guide and Beppo Roadsweeper. Guido is a storyteller who discovers that with a listener like Momo, new stories pop into his head as fast has he can tell them. He makes his money by giving tours of the amphitheater, complete with false histories from his imagination which he maintains are better than the false histories sold in guidebooks. Moreover, he has an entire collection of "Momo stories" that he will only tell to his best friend because these are the stories that are closest to his heart. Beppo is, as one might guess, a roadsweeper, who believes in taking life at its own pace. He never hurries, never despairs at how much road there still is left to sweep, and he takes his time answering a question even if it takes hours and causes people to think that he didn't hear the question in the first place. Momo always listens though, for as long as it takes for the answer to come.
This first section of the book is incredibly entertaining and easy to read, but as with The Neverending Story there is a sad moral to the tale. In The Neverending Story, Fantasia (or Fantastica in some translations), the world of human dreams is dying out because people are no longer taking time to dream. Moreover, a terrible Nothing is pulling Fantasians into its inky blackness and into the real world. There they come out as twisted perversions of their magical selves, as lies. An abuse of human creativity in Ende's view. In Momo the villain is not some mysterious Nothing, but instead Gray Men, men in gray suits who live off of stolen time. In order to perpetuate themselves, Gray Men visit people with free time and encourage them to become timesavers, which means working more quickly, getting more done, and cutting out time wasted by talking to friends or relaxing at the end of the day. The standard pitch is that all the saved time goes straight into the Timesavers Bank, where it will accrue interest. Hence, people are convinced that if they just work harder and longer today, it will pay back in a wonderful tomorrow. Yet the more the work, the less time they find they have, which makes them work even harder. No one remembers a visit from a Gray Man because they are so blank and boring, they are instantly forgettable. No one even notices one walking down the street with his suit and briefcase. The city becomes transformed into a bustling metropolis full of overworked, unhappy people who cannot remember why they chose to live in this way.
And Momo soon becomes a thorn in the side of the Gray Men because she has all the time she wants and knows how to enjoy it. Moreover, she is teaching other people to do the same thing. She even visits some of her friends affected by the Gray Men and persuades them to abandon their timesaving ways. Therefore the Gray Men try to neutralize her, but in the process learn that not even a Gray Man is impervious to the power of listening. The agent sent to distract Momo finds himself confessing his own misery, and so he makes himself memorable. This makes Momo more than an inconvenience; she becomes instead a serious threat to the existence of the Gray Men because she alone knows they exist.
So the stage is set for a showdown between a homeless girl and an army of time-thieves. Fortunately Momo is not alone. She is rescued from the Gray Men's first attack by a talking turtle named Cassiopeia, who turns out to be a creature from beyond the frontiers of time. Thus Cassiopeia has the ability to see one half hour into the future, never mind that she can't do anything to change what she sees. She takes Momo to the mysterious Professor Hora, who explains to Momo the inner workings of time and prepares her for her counterstrike against the Gray Men. But little does Momo know that while she is with Professor Hora, the Gray Men have moved against her closest friends and the children she once used to look after. The world she returns to is nothing like the world she fled with Cassiopeia. Before Momo gets the chance to save her city, she must first witness the unimaginable damage done by timesaving.
While this is a children's story, the theme is by no means childish. I read this book when I was a teenager, and thought it was fun. I suppose I understood the moral, but it wasn't until I grew up and started law school that I understood how literal some of the images were. The men in gray suits who always urge one to work harder, or feel guilty for 'wasting time' are very much alive in our society. This makes the battle between Momo and the Gray Men, at times, heart wrenching. Guido is seduced by fame and learns that his special stories meant only for Momo garner him no more acclaim than any of the rest of his stories, but he tells them anyway because he's desperate not to lose his status. Ever increasing numbers of children start flocking to the amphitheater with their expensive toys, bad manners, and sad stories of how they think they are nothing more than a drain on their parents' time. On the other hand, some of the images are also funnier to an adult, like Guido's story of Marxentius Communis, a cruel tyrant to who tries to remake the world according to his own ideas. He builds an entirely new Earth, but the only materials at hand are those of this world, so he ends up with a world just like the one that existed before. (Few children will know enough about Marx to get the joke.)
Ende, in his afterword, claims that this story was told to him by a stranger on a long train ride, and this stranger said: "I've described all these events as if they've already happened. I might as well have described them as if they still lay in the future. To me, there's very little difference." Momo has a very timeless feel to it; the story could take place in any era since the invention of the automobile. Moreover, the images and themes of this book are no doubt recurring ones. Hence this shouldn't be a lost book; it should be a story that every child, and parent, knows well.
Momo even has a familiar, Cassiopeia the talking turtle.
Bye
Thanee
