Beppo Roadsweeper’s detention turns his search for Momo into a bargain designed to make him serve the Gray Men. They confirm that Momo is their prisoner, threaten to keep her beyond his reach, and make her possible release depend on his silence and the saving of one hundred thousand hours. Beppo accepts, then tries to meet the demand through relentless work—a painful reversal of the patient, deliberate way he once swept.

Arrest and Detention

After Beppo tells his story at several police stations, an inspector decides to have him investigated as a possible threat to society. Beppo spends half a day in a cell before two policemen take him across the city to a large, barred-window building. It is a hospital for nervous disorders, not the prison or detention centre he had first expected. The distinction does not mean he is free to leave: staff examine him, listen to his account repeatedly, and keep him there while their investigations continue.

The staff treat Beppo kindly, but he cannot tell whether they believe him. When he asks when he can go, they say that he is still needed and that their investigations are making progress. Beppo assumes they mean the search for Momo and waits patiently. That misunderstanding leaves him vulnerable to the Gray Men, who approach him in the ward after the authorities have confined him and separated him from his ordinary life.

The Gray Man’s Bargain

One night, Beppo wakes to find a Gray Man beside his bed. He recognizes the visitor’s bowler hat and briefcase and starts to call for help, but the visitor orders him to be quiet. The Gray Man insists that Beppo already has some idea of the power the organization wields. He also tells him that although telling his story cannot harm the Gray Men, doing so does not suit their plans.

The central revelation is that Momo is indeed a prisoner of the Gray Men. The visitor warns Beppo that he will never find her and claims that each attempt to rescue her makes her situation worse. He uses that threat to make Beppo’s concern for Momo part of the pressure against him: Beppo is told that he can have her back only if he never speaks again about the Gray Men or their activities.

The demanded ransom is not money but one hundred thousand hours of Beppo’s time. The Gray Man says that the organization will handle the banking and that Beppo’s task is simply to save the hours, by whatever means he chooses. In return for accepting, Beppo is promised release from the hospital within a few days; refusal means remaining there for as long as Momo remains in their hands. Faced with that choice, Beppo agrees. The Gray Man reiterates the requirements of absolute discretion and the full time payment, then leaves.

Release and Reversal

Beppo keeps the agreement’s first condition: from that night on, he stops telling his story. When people ask why he had told it before, he only looks sad and shrugs. The hospital authorities discharge him a few days later, but his release does not restore his former life. Instead of going home, he goes directly to the depot where he and his workmates collect their brooms and handcarts, takes up his broom, and begins sweeping the streets.

The work now has a new purpose and a new rhythm. Beppo no longer sweeps with the breath before each step and stroke that had once marked his method. He hurries, without pride in the work, because he believes speed is the only way he can save time for Momo’s ransom. The change sickens him: he knows that he is betraying beliefs he has held throughout his life. He would rather have starved than abandon those principles if his own future alone were at stake. Because he believes Momo’s future depends on the ransom, however, he sees no other way to try to save her.

Beppo works day and night and does not return to his shack near the amphitheater. When exhaustion overtakes him, he sleeps briefly on a park bench or even at the kerb, then wakes with a start and resumes sweeping. He takes hurried snacks while moving and gives meals as little time as possible. The work continues for weeks and months. Autumn gives way to winter, then spring and summer, but he scarcely notices the changing seasons because he remains intent on accumulating the hundred thousand hours.

The Cost of Saving Time

Beppo’s bargain echoes the Gray Men’s broader method: they turn time into something to be measured, saved, and claimed, while concealing what that system costs. Their offer makes his own labor the instrument of his attempted rescue, and its promise of a future reunion drives him to sacrifice the present. His earlier, careful sweeping is replaced by work governed by haste, a change that resembles the time-saving discipline imposed elsewhere in the city.

The irony is sharpened by the Gray Men’s false promise that saved time can be banked for Momo’s return. In the wider account of the city, people who follow time-saving instructions work faster, cut conversations short, and reorganize their lives around clocks and timetables. Mr Figaro, for example, is urged to serve customers in half the usual time and monitor his workers by the minute; once he adopts the system, he treats every customer in the same compressed way. The apparent gain in saved time accompanies a loss of pleasure and human connection. Beppo’s agreement gives this ideology an intimate and coercive form: he accepts its logic not for personal advancement, but because the Gray Men make it seem like the only route to Momo.

The townspeople are too short of time to pay much attention to Beppo as he rushes past. Those who do notice him regard him as foolish, a judgment he has encountered before and scarcely registers. If someone asks why he is hurrying, he pauses, looks alarmed and sorrowful, and puts a finger to his lips. The gesture shows the bargain’s second consequence alongside his changed work: silence has become part of his effort to raise the ransom. His devotion to Momo remains, but the Gray Men have made that devotion serve a system that drains meaning from the time he is trying to save.