Momo pursues the Gray Men through the frozen city

Momo pursues the Men in Gray through the frozen city in a chase where every ordinary motion has become an obstacle and every minute carries the risk of losing both the fugitives and her friends. With Cassiopeia’s help, she keeps moving through streets locked in time, discovers Beppo standing helplessly among the frozen inhabitants, and eventually reaches him again after the city’s hours have been released. The pursuit turns a race against the time-thieves into a passage through the human cost of their theft—and, at its end, a reunion made possible by time’s return.

The Chase Begins

As Momo leaves Nowhere House with Cassiopeia, Men in Gray are already gathered near the mouth of Never Lane, talking and gesticulating. When they see the three fugitives, they run; more join them, until the whole group streams toward the city. Their flight crosses the strange district of snow-white houses and peculiar shadows, passes a monument shaped like an egg, and enters the shabby tenements where people live on the edge of time. Behind the fleeing crowd comes Momo: a girl carrying a flower, with a tortoise under her arm. The contrast gives the pursuit its unusual scale. An army of gray figures races ahead, but the pursuer is small, and she does not need to catch them by force; she needs to keep following.

The city makes that task physically precarious. Cars choke the streets, their exhaust fumes fixed in the air, while drivers remain frozen at the wheel. One is caught glaring at a neighbor and tapping his forehead; cyclists are stranded at junctions with their arms extended to signal a turn. Pavements are packed with motionless people, traffic policemen are frozen mid-gesture, and a flock of pigeons hangs above a square beneath an equally still aeroplane. Water in fountains seems turned to ice, falling leaves stay suspended, and even a small dog remains fixed with its leg raised against a lamppost. The scene makes the city’s stoppage legible in fragments: not an empty landscape, but an entire daily life arrested before any of its gestures can finish.

At crowded points Momo and Cassiopeia have to thread their way through the pedestrians. Momo’s small, thin frame gives her more room than most, but the suspended world can still hurt her: even a feather in midair could injure someone who ran into it. She watches the hour-lily in her hand; it has only just opened fully, so there is no immediate need to fear that its time is running out. The flower marks the limits within which she must act, while the stillness around her makes every step feel exposed.

Beppo in the Frozen Streets

The pursuit is interrupted when Momo glances down a side street and sees Beppo. Her joy sends her running toward him, calling out and asking where he has been and why he never came to see her. Still holding Cassiopeia, she throws her free arm around his neck—but the embrace meets a body as rigid as cast iron. The collision hurts enough to bring tears to her eyes. Beppo cannot hear or answer her: he stands as motionless as everything else, staring down at the dirty street.

His appearance makes the cost of his absence visible. He looks more bent and gaunt, his face pale, his chin rough with white stubble because he has so seldom had time to shave. His broom has been worn down by incessant sweeping until its bristles are scarcely longer than his beard. Momo has found her friend, but at the worst possible instant: she cannot make him notice her, and fears that, if the effort to save time fails, he may remain there forever. The chase briefly becomes a confrontation with the possibility of permanent separation, not merely another obstacle between Momo and the Men in Gray.

Cassiopeia fidgets to urge Momo onward. Momo returns to the main street, only to find that the fugitives have vanished from view. When she looks to Cassiopeia for direction, the tortoise signals, "KEEP GOING," then assures her, "YOU’LL FIND THEM." Because Cassiopeia knows in advance that Momo will find the time-thieves, any route will lead her there. Momo therefore runs on, turning left or right as she pleases rather than following a visible trail. The tortoise’s certainty replaces a map: when the city’s sameness and the disappearing crowd make pursuit seem impossible, Momo can continue without knowing exactly where the road leads.

Through the City and Back to Beppo

Momo reaches a northern housing development whose buildings and straight streets are so alike that their regularity becomes a maze. The uniformity makes her feel as if she is running in place. Almost out of hope, she catches sight of a limping man in gray disappearing around a corner. His suit is torn, his bowler hat and briefcase are gone, and he still has a smouldering gray cigar in his mouth. The glimpse restores the chase’s direction: even when the larger group is out of sight, one fugitive’s presence gives Momo a trail to follow.

The pursuit’s emotional destination is not the point at which Momo first catches sight of a fleeing man, but the reunion that follows the return of time. Beppo has been wondering whether he has already saved enough hours to ransom Momo when someone tugs at his jacket. He turns and sees her smiling. Their happiness comes out in alternating laughter and tears, in talk all at once and in embraces repeated again and again. Passers-by stop to share in it; now that time is available again, they can pause for one another rather than hurry past.

Beppo takes the rest of the day off, shoulders his broom, and walks arm in arm with Momo to the old amphitheater. That destination is also the home her neighborhood once made for her together: neighbors repaired her dilapidated stone room with a stove, a table and chairs, a bed, blankets, and a painted flower, then celebrated her arrival with whatever food their children could spare. The reunion therefore brings Momo back not only to a place, but to the shared life that began there. The wider return to ordinary time is expressed in similar acts of attention: children play in the street while drivers wait and join their games; neighbors stop to talk; passers-by admire flowers or feed birds; doctors give patients proper attention, and workers can take the time their jobs require. The city’s changed pace completes the chase’s movement from frozen isolation toward restored human company.

Narrative Significance

The frozen city turns Momo’s pursuit into a test of attention and persistence. She must move among halted gestures without treating the people inside them as scenery: Beppo’s worn broom, unshaven face, and immobility make the time-thieves’ damage intimate and particular. At the same time, Cassiopeia’s guidance lets the pursuit proceed without certainty about the route. Momo’s task is not to master the maze by calculation, but to keep going toward the people and the time that must be recovered.

The ending answers the image of Beppo trapped in a motionless street with a walk taken at leisure. Once time resumes, he and Momo can speak, embrace, and return home together; strangers can stop and share their happiness. The city’s renewed life is measured not by greater speed or output, but by the time people can give to one another. The chase thus links the rescue of time to the recovery of ordinary human relations.