The children’s demonstration against the gray men

The children’s demonstration against the gray men is an organized attempt to break the secrecy on which the time thieves depend, turning what Momo knows into a public campaign. Children march through the streets with banners, posters, noise, and a song, but the adults they hope to reach do not come to the meeting. The contrast between the procession’s swelling numbers and its failure to draw a single grown-up makes the episode a reversal: publicity spreads, while the truth remains unheard by the people whose cooperation might matter most.

The secret meeting and its stakes

At three o’clock the afternoon before the campaign was planned, the ancient amphitheater filled with the voices of roughly fifty or sixty children. They had come from near and far, in every variety of size, temperament, and circumstance. Some were accompanied by younger siblings, including tiny children who watched the unfamiliar gathering wide-eyed. Franco, Paolo, and Massimo were there, while many others were newcomers drawn by the subject. Claudio, the boy who owned the transistor radio, arrived without it, introduced himself to Momo, and said he was glad to have been invited. The gathering had a wider reach than the circle of friends who had first discussed the danger.

The absence of Momo’s grown-up friends saddened her; only Guido Guide and Beppo Roadsweeper had come from that group. Beppo’s presence carried particular weight. The previous night he had turned the danger over in his mind and resolved not to let Guido Guide and Momo face it alone, while still hoping to dissuade them from taking risks. When Guido Guide rose to address the children, Beppo interrupted to warn that Momo’s account could endanger both her and her listeners. Several children immediately demanded that she speak, and their chant of Momo’s name grew until it filled the amphitheater. Beppo sat down, removed his steel-rimmed spectacles, and rubbed his eyes wearily.

Momo stood uncertainly, caught between Beppo’s warning and the children’s insistence. She eventually told them about her encounter with a member of the gang and how he had given himself away. Her account changed the mood: the children had not imagined the time thieves could be so sinister, and a very small child began to cry before being comforted. The scene shows the cost of making the secret public even among its intended allies. Knowledge gives the campaign a subject and a target, but it also makes the danger more immediate to the children hearing it.

From revelation to a public campaign

After the account, Guido Guide asked how many children had the courage to join a campaign against the Men in Gray. Franco wanted to know why Beppo had opposed Momo’s telling. Guido Guide answered that Beppo feared the time thieves hunted anyone who knew their secret, whereas he believed knowledge made a person invulnerable to them. The exchange exposes a consequential disagreement within the group: Beppo treats exposure as a risk, while Guido Guide treats it as protection. The children are asked to act before that difference has been resolved.

When the first discussion produced no immediate plan, Paolo urged the group to do something before the time thieves learned what they were preparing. Guido Guide then explained that he had considered hundreds of schemes and rejected them before settling on one that depended on everyone’s cooperation. In his account, the Men in Gray drew power from operating secretly and without recognition; making the truth widely known would therefore make them harmless. His proposed answer was a mass demonstration: paint posters and banners, march through the streets, attract attention, and invite the whole city to the old amphitheater the following Sunday to hear the full facts.

Guido Guide promised that a vast crowd would gather and that revealing the truth would change the world overnight, ending the theft of people’s time. The children answered with exultant shouts and approved the plan unanimously. They were to keep it secret until the march, then invite the city to attend the meeting. The decision converts an abstract explanation of the time thieves’ power into a collective public tactic. Its confidence, however, depends on an expectation the event will not fulfill: that attention can be turned into understanding, and understanding into adult participation.

Preparing and marching

For several days the amphitheater became a center of furtive, feverish work. Sheets of paper, paint, brushes, paste, cardboard, poles, planks, and other supplies appeared, but the children preferred not to say where they had obtained them. Some made banners, posters, and placards; those good at writing devised catchy slogans and painted them in their neatest lettering. The preparations combine practical labor with concealment: the children publicly plan to expose a secret, but must first protect their own plan from discovery.

When everything was ready, the children assembled and set off in single file, with Guido Guide, Beppo Roadsweeper, and Momo at the head. They brandished their handmade signs, clattered saucepan lids, blew penny whistles, chanted slogans, and sang a song Guido Guide had composed for the occasion. Its verses urged people to listen before it was too late and warned of the consequences of ignoring their message. The procession’s sound and spectacle were designed to carry beyond the children’s meeting place; the demonstrators sought attention before they could deliver the full explanation.

The march did attract other children. Some who saw it had known nothing about the affair, but joined as it passed; the procession grew until hundreds or even thousands were in the streets, urging adults to attend the coming meeting. Police intervened several times when the procession obstructed traffic, breaking it up temporarily. The children simply re-formed elsewhere and started again. Their persistence kept the demonstration moving, but did not produce a confrontation with the people they opposed: despite keeping watch, they did not see a single man in gray.

The empty meeting and its aftermath

The campaign’s decisive failure came not in the streets but at the amphitheater. The great moment passed without a single grown-up appearing. The demonstration had reached many children, but had passed almost unnoticed by the adults it was meant to persuade; the children’s efforts had been in vain. The crowd of young demonstrators and the absence of adult listeners stand in stark opposition to Guido Guide’s promised vision of thousands flocking to hear the truth.

As the sun sank behind purple clouds, its rays reached only the amphitheater’s highest tier, where hundreds of children had waited for a long time. The gathering that had begun with excited voices ended in a silence without its expected audience. Paolo eventually told Momo that no one else would arrive and went home. Franco followed, concluding that the children could not count on grown-ups and that he would no longer trust them. One by one, more children left. By the time the last had given up and gone home, only Momo, Guido Guide, and Beppo Roadsweeper remained.

The event therefore ends not with the public revelation the children intended, but with their isolation. The march proves that the message can spread among the young and that the children can organize, improvise, and persist despite interruption. It also reveals the limit of spectacle: multiplying banners, noise, and participants does not ensure that adults will listen. The children’s unanswered appeal leaves Momo alone with her two companions at the amphitheater, while the secret they sought to expose remains without the broad public hearing Guido Guide had promised.