Beppo Roadsweeper
MomoBeppo Roadsweeper is an elderly street cleaner and one of Momo’s two closest friends. His slow, attentive way of living stands against the efficiency demanded by the Men in Gray: he is willing to betray the principles that have shaped his working life only when doing so seems to be the sole way to secure Momo’s return. His story makes the novel’s conflict over time intimate and concrete, turning an abstract theft into a change in the pace, purpose, and moral meaning of a man’s labor.
Identity and Character
Beppo’s name comes from his occupation. Although he must have had a proper surname, everyone, including Beppo himself, calls him by the nickname that describes his work as a roadsweeper. He lives near the amphitheater in a makeshift shack of bricks, corrugated iron, and tar paper. Small and bent-backed, with a large head, a single tuft of white hair, and steel-rimmed spectacles, he looks as unassuming as his place on the city’s margins.
People often consider Beppo not quite right in the head because he does not answer questions at once. He first smiles amiably, then takes time to decide whether a reply is needed and, if so, what he can honestly say. His silence may last hours or even a day, by which time the questioner has often forgotten the question. To Momo, however, his pauses are not evidence of confusion. She understands that he is determined not to say anything untrue, and that he believes many human misfortunes arise from lies told deliberately or carelessly in haste.
His patience is a practice rather than an abstraction. Before each step and sweep, Beppo takes a deep breath; he advances through his assigned streets one measured movement at a time. He knows his work is useful and does it willingly. Even the pauses in his labor belong to this rhythm: he stops to gaze into the distance, then begins again. His care for truth and his deliberate work are expressions of the same refusal to let haste dictate what matters.
Work and Friendship with Momo
Beppo’s working day begins before dawn. He rides his squeaky bicycle to the city depot, where he and the other roadsweepers wait for their brooms and pushcarts and receive their street assignments. He enjoys the early hours, when the city is still asleep, and takes quiet satisfaction in doing a necessary job well. The novel’s account of his ordinary routine establishes a counterpoint to the Men in Gray’s doctrine: work need not be measured only by speed or by the time it appears to save.
Momo is one of the very few people willing to wait long enough to understand him. She recognizes the integrity behind his delayed answers, while he is among the friends who come to see her and share what little they have. Their closeness depends in part on a quality others misread: Momo does not demand that Beppo perform quickness as proof of intelligence or affection. His silences can be understood between them rather than treated as a barrier.
When plans are made to mobilize friends and children, Beppo initially leaves without speaking. Then he stops and tells Guido Guide that he is worried. Asked what troubles him, he says that he believes Momo. The moment is brief, but it shows how seriously he takes her and how his silence is not indifference. His confidence in her matters even when he cannot yet explain what will happen or how they should meet it.
The Men in Gray and the Ransom
Beppo encounters the Men in Gray at the Municipal Garbage Dump. Woken by a gust of cold air, he sees gray-clad figures gathered around three men seated on a raised bench. He senses that he has no business there and fears being discovered, but the assembled figures appear to have eyes only for their tribunal. Whether they fail to notice him or mistake him for discarded material, he stays still. The episode places the quiet roadsweeper in the presence of the secret power that is reorganizing the city’s relationship with time.
After Momo disappears, Beppo continues going to the amphitheater whenever work permits, sitting there and waiting. His concern eventually becomes too great for him to remain there: despite Guido’s objections, he resolves to go to the police. He fears that Momo might be returned to an institution with barred windows. The Men in Gray prove difficult to confront through ordinary means, and his anxiety for her becomes the pressure they can exploit.
A gray man offers to have Momo returned on the condition that Beppo never speak again about the group or its activities. The price is a hundred thousand hours of Beppo’s time, which he must save for them. Beppo agrees. The bargain binds his silence to his labor: he is to keep their secret and produce the time they demand. After the encounter, he stops telling the story of what happened. When asked why he told it in the first place, he only looks sad and shrugs.
Haste, Sacrifice, and Return
The hospital authorities discharge Beppo a few days later. Rather than going home to his shack, he goes straight to the depot, takes up his broom, and begins sweeping. His old method is gone. He no longer pauses for a breath before each step and stroke, but hurries, no longer proud of his work and intent only on saving time. He feels sickened by what he is doing and knows that he is betraying convictions held for a lifetime. Had the sacrifice concerned only himself, he would rather have starved than abandon those principles; he continues because Momo’s ransom gives the sacrifice its purpose.
Beppo sweeps day and night, never returning to his home. When exhaustion overcomes him, he sleeps briefly on a park bench or kerb, then wakes with a start and resumes work. He also cuts meals down to hurried snacks eaten while moving. These details show the cost of trying to meet the Men in Gray’s demand: his work becomes the very opposite of the thoughtful service that once gave it meaning. The time-saving system does not simply change his schedule; it turns a useful task into relentless effort and separates him from the settled routine by which he had lived.
During the city’s stoppage, Momo and Cassiopeia are moving through streets crowded with motionless people when Momo catches sight of Beppo. She calls to him and runs over, asking where he has been and why he never came to see her. Still holding Cassiopeia, she throws her free arm around him but bounces off: in the frozen moment, neither can complete the embrace. The encounter brings their separation into the same suspended world in which Momo is pursuing the Men in Gray.
When time starts again, Momo finds herself back in the side street where she last saw Beppo. He is leaning on his broom, gazing into the distance as he used to. He is no longer in a hurry and feels brighter and more hopeful, though he does not know why. He wonders whether he may already have saved the hundred thousand hours needed to ransom Momo. Then she tugs at his jacket, and he turns to see her smiling at him. The ending reunites the two friends and restores the unhurried posture of Beppo’s earlier life. His hope had been organized around saving time for Momo; her return arrives not through the completion of the frantic labor he had imposed on himself, but as time resumes and the friends are together again.
Narrative Role
Beppo’s character gives the novel a human measure for its argument about time. The Men in Gray understand time as something to calculate and take; Beppo’s former routine instead joins time to attention, truthful speech, and useful work. His change under pressure makes the damage of the gray men’s system visible without making him simply its victim: he chooses to accept the bargain out of loyalty to Momo, yet the price is a daily violation of the values that made his life his own.
His relationship with Momo also contrasts with the city’s growing impatience. Others may take his pauses as a sign that he cannot think properly, but Momo waits and understands what his silence protects. At the end, the image of Beppo leaning on his broom, once again looking into the distance rather than hurrying onward, gathers that contrast into a gesture. His reunion with Momo restores not only their companionship but the possibility of living at a pace in which work, thought, and care are not treated as time to be discarded.
