The gray men’s hunt for Momo and her escape to Nowhere House

The Men in Gray’s hunt for Momo and her escape to Nowhere House turns a threatened child into the focus of a citywide pursuit, while a tortoise quietly guides her through defenses the pursuers cannot overcome. Beppo Roadsweeper races to warn her but arrives after she has vanished; Momo, unaware of the scale of the hunt, follows the tortoise through the city and reaches Professor Secundus Minutus Hora. The escape makes the story’s struggle over time concrete: the Men in Gray organize and search with bureaucratic efficiency, but Momo advances by following a guide whose slow pace leads her beyond their reach.

Threat and the First Search

The danger becomes immediate after Beppo hears the gray judge’s warning that the Men in Gray will act against Momo. He pedals through the darkness toward the Amphitheater, intent on reaching and protecting her, though he does not know what he will do once he gets there. His urgent journey forms a parallel to Momo’s slower departure: he tries to meet the threat by hurrying toward her, while her escape begins with waiting.

At about the same time, well after midnight, Momo is sitting on the Amphitheater steps. She does not know what she is waiting for, but has not gone to bed. A large tortoise brushes her bare foot. Its expression and attentive eyes make Momo think it may speak, and she responds to it as a companion. She is unsure whether the letters on its shell have only just appeared or whether she had failed to notice them before. Faintly luminous against the shell’s natural patterns, they instruct her to follow.

Momo asks whether the message is meant for her. The tortoise has already started away, but pauses and looks back; Momo understands that she is to come with it and follows. Its measured progress takes the pair out of the Amphitheater and toward the city. The scene gives Momo no explanation of who sent the guide or where it is taking her. Instead, the shell’s brief messages and the tortoise’s repeated pauses make following, rather than knowing the destination, the basis of her escape.

The Manhunt and Beppo’s Failure

The Men in Gray surround the ruined Amphitheater with a fleet of cars and search its grass-grown steps and hidden corners. They find the opening in the wall and enter Momo’s room, examining even the bed and the little stove, but she is gone. They infer that someone may have warned her and decide that searching the site further would waste time. Their response is to notify headquarters and request a full-scale manhunt.

Beppo reaches the Amphitheater after the search. Tire tracks cover the ground; inside, the table and chairs are overturned and the bedding has been stripped away. He calls for Momo, receives no answer, and concludes that the Men in Gray have taken her. His search therefore fails at precisely the point when the larger pursuit begins: he can see evidence of the raid, but not the route by which Momo escaped. His desperate attempt to reach her does not bring him into contact with her or with the tortoise.

The Timesaving Bank orders every agent in the city to abandon other work and look for Momo. Its agents spread through streets, rooftops, sewers, transport terminals, buses, and trams, yet do not find her. Momo has no knowledge of this army of pursuers. She asks the tortoise where it is taking her, and its shell answers with reassurance. Though its route winds through parks, bridges, subways, buildings, corridors, and cellars, the tortoise appears to anticipate where the pursuers will go. At times the agents arrive only moments after Momo and her guide have passed, but the two groups never meet.

The contrast is not simply between a large search and a small escape. The Men in Gray can mobilize the city’s ordinary routes and institutions, but the tortoise moves Momo through them without allowing the hunt to close. When Momo remarks on her ability to read, the shell warns her to be quiet. The short messages regulate her actions while preserving the mystery of the guide; Momo can follow its directions without being told the plan behind them.

The Uncanny District and Never Lane

The tortoise leads Momo into a poor, deserted neighborhood of shabby tenements. Then, as they turn a corner, they enter a district where the light seems to come from everywhere at once. A black stone block supports a huge white egg, and the houses have white walls and deeply shadowed windows. The stillness and unusual illumination set this place apart from the dark streets beyond its borders. Momo continues to follow the tortoise, whose slow pace does not prevent them from making progress.

Three gray limousines pursue Momo to the edge of the district. An agent in the leading car sees her turn toward the white houses, but the vehicles stop when they reach the corner. Their engines run and their wheels turn without carrying them forward; the agents who try to continue on foot manage to cover only ten yards before having to give up. Momo disappears among the houses. The pursuers recognize that they will not catch her there, while she remains unaware of the confrontation behind her.

Farther on, Momo and the tortoise pass through deserted white streets until they reach Never Lane, whose buildings are crowded with turrets, gables, and balconies. At the end stands a separate house with a bronze front door. When Momo pauses to read the lane’s name, the tortoise moves ahead. She calls after it but cannot hear her own voice. As she tries to walk forward, an invisible opposing force makes progress almost impossible, as though she were struggling against a powerful current.

The tortoise comes back and instructs Momo to walk backward. She does so, and immediately moves up the lane with ease. The reversal affects more than her direction: she finds herself thinking, breathing, and feeling backward as well. This episode makes the lane’s name a practical rule rather than a mere sign. Ordinary forward movement fails; reaching the tortoise requires Momo to accept a backward passage through time and experience.

Arrival at Nowhere House

At the end of Never Lane, Momo reaches the large bronze door. It opens by itself, and she reads the sign identifying the building as Nowhere House before slipping inside as the door begins to close. Beyond it, the force that impeded her outside is absent. She follows the tortoise down a high corridor lined with marble statues, then to a small door. The shell tells her they have arrived.

The door bears the name Professor Secundus Minutus Hora. Momo takes a breath, lifts the latch, and enters. Inside, she hears a chorus of chiming, ticking, humming, and whirring. The latch clicks shut behind her. The pursuit thus ends not with Beppo finding Momo or the Men in Gray capturing her, but with Momo brought to the threshold of Professor Hora’s room. The destination gives the tortoise’s unexplained guidance a concrete consequence: it has led her beyond the reach of the citywide search and directly to the professor.

Significance

The episode sets two kinds of movement against one another. Beppo pedals as fast as he can, and the Men in Gray deploy agents across the city, but neither speed nor numbers reveal Momo’s path. The tortoise proceeds slowly, yet repeatedly chooses routes that keep Momo ahead of the pursuit. In Never Lane, the contrast becomes literal: forward effort cannot advance her, while walking backward carries her onward.

That reversal belongs to the novel’s larger account of time. The story has established that time is life itself and that people who save more time may end up with less. Against the Men in Gray’s organized effort to control people’s time, Momo’s escape depends on patiently following a creature whose pace appears at odds with haste. The episode does not yet explain the tortoise’s abilities or the nature of Nowhere House; it closes instead on Momo’s arrival at Professor Hora’s door, with the strange sounds inside marking the beginning of the next encounter.