Momo rejects the gray agent’s Living Doll

Momo rejects the gray agent’s Living Doll in a contest over what can make a life happy: an endless succession of possessions, or love between people. Agent No. BLW/553/c presents Lola and a stream of promised gifts as a way to keep Momo perpetually occupied and independent of her friends. Momo sees through the offer without being able to explain the danger at first; her refusal exposes the agent’s hidden identity and the Timesaving Bank’s dependence on stolen time.

The doll and its arrival

On an exceptionally hot, sultry afternoon, Momo comes across a doll on the steps of the Amphitheater. Children sometimes leave expensive toys behind, but this one is unfamiliar to her, and its size and appearance make it hard to mistake for an ordinary plaything. Nearly as tall as Momo, it has a red minidress, high-heeled sandals, and a lifelike face that suggests a stylish young woman rather than a child or baby.

When Momo reaches out and touches it, the doll blinks, opens its mouth, and introduces itself as Lola, the Living Doll. Momo jumps back, then automatically answers with her own name. Lola immediately claims to belong to Momo and says that all the other children envy her. The doll’s first appeal is not a shared game but possession and status: it promises Momo something other children supposedly want.

An education in endless wanting

A man in gray appears and tells Momo that he has been watching her. He claims she does not know how to play with such a marvellous doll and offers to show her. The scene shifts from a strange encounter with a toy to a demonstration directed by an adult who seems to know how to turn desire into a system. Lola asks for nice new things, and the man produces them from a trunk.

The gifts arrive in a mounting heap: a mink coat, tennis clothes, a skiing outfit, a swimsuit, a riding habit, nightwear, and dresses. He continues with miniature accessories and devices, including a snakeskin purse, lipstick and powder compact, camera, tennis racket, working doll’s television, jewelry, a gold-plated automatic, golf clubs, a chequebook, perfume, and bath products. The display is deliberately excessive, but its governing promise is simple: if Momo keeps acquiring more, she will never be bored.

The agent anticipates the obvious limit—that Lola might eventually have everything—and presents it as no limit at all. He introduces Butch, a lifelike boy doll the same size as Lola, and says that further dolls and wardrobes can follow, with more companions and their companions after them. The game has no final object to reach. Its appeal depends on keeping the next wish just ahead of fulfillment, an arrangement he sums up with the promise that there is always something left to wish for.

The offer to replace friendship

After the display, the man asks whether Momo understands how to play with dolls like these. She says yes, but she is shaking with cold. He offers to give her the gifts, not all at once but one at a time, along with still more things, provided she plays as he has shown her. He insists that she will no longer need her friends because the dolls and their expanding supply of accessories will be enough to amuse her.

The offer makes the purpose of the abundance plain: it is meant to occupy Momo and sever her from the relationships that matter to her. She feels that she is already in a fight, though she cannot yet say what she is fighting or against whom. The agent’s words reach her without making their speaker feel fully present; as with Lola, she hears speech but cannot readily connect it to a recognizable person. Her unease is therefore both intellectual and bodily. She feels danger, and the agent’s coldness makes her afraid, even while she feels pity for him.

Momo does not answer the offer by arguing over the doll’s beauty or the quality of its possessions. Instead, she quietly doubts that anyone could love it. The agent dismisses this as beside the point. Momo then states what the bargain cannot accommodate: she loves her friends. Her refusal rests not on having no curiosity about the toys—she has stared at the scene in fascination—but on recognizing that the proposed substitute cannot give or receive the attachment she already values.

The confession and the agent’s flight

The man in gray identifies himself as Agent No. BLW/553/c and names the Timesaving Bank as the organization behind the gifts. Momo recalls what Beppo Roadsweeper and Guido Guide have said about timesaving spreading like an infection and suspects that the stranger is connected to it. She feels alone, wishes her friends were beside her, and nevertheless holds her ground. Her question about whether anyone loves him unsettles the agent; he admits that someone like Momo threatens the Bank’s continued existence.

Under pressure, he begins to disclose what the Bank must conceal. He explains that the agents have to remain unrecognized and that they make sure people do not remember them. He reveals that they take the time people save, drain it away, and hoard it, while human beings fail to understand the value of their own time. The disclosure comes against his apparent will: his face convulses with horror, and his voice seems to emerge from far away. He then tries to take the words back, insisting that Momo forget him and what he has said.

The agent grabs and shakes Momo, but she cannot speak. He abruptly jumps up, looks around like a cornered animal, snatches his briefcase, and runs to the car. The dolls and their scattered belongings fly back into the trunk as if an explosion were being reversed; the trunk slams shut, and the car speeds away, scattering grit and pebbles. The abrupt return of the objects to their container makes the extravagant display look less like a gift than a temporary apparatus for the attempted temptation.

What remains after the encounter

Momo stays where she is for a long time, trying to understand what she has heard. As the chill leaves her limbs, her thoughts become clearer, and the agent’s real voice allows her to remember the encounter. The scene thus turns on the contrast between manufactured distraction and recovered understanding: the gifts vanish, but what the agent accidentally revealed remains with her.

The last visible trace is the butt of a small gray cigar, trampled into the sun-baked grass and smouldering to ashes. The encounter has ended without Momo accepting Lola, the promised possessions, or the isolation they were meant to buy. Its consequence is larger than the rejection of a doll: Momo now has direct knowledge that the Timesaving Bank exists, that its agents must hide, and that its business depends on stealing the time people save.