oo 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 ’ 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? ’ 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
ã®u?' 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, thoroughl