Michael Ende by Momo

Author:Momo [Momo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-06-01T21:14:51+00:00

Nowhere House

Momo was standing in the biggest room she’d ever seen. It was bigger than the biggest cathedral or concert hall in the world. Massive columns supported a roof that could be sensed rather than seen in the gloom far above. There were no windows anywhere. The golden light that wove its way across this immense hall came from countless candles whose flames burned so steadily that they looked like daubs of brilliant paint requiring no wax at all to keep them alight.

The thousandfold whirring and ticking and humming and chiming that Momo had heard on entering came from innumerable clocks of every shape and size. They reposed on long tables, in glass cabinets, on golden wall brackets, on endless rows of shelves.

There were dainty, bejewelled pocket watches, cheap tin alarm clocks, hourglasses, musical clocks with pirouetting dolls on top, sundials, clocks encased in wood and marble, glass clocks and clocks driven by jets of water. On the walls hung all manner of cuckoo clocks and other clocks with weights and pendulums, some swinging slowly and majestically and others wagging busily to and fro. All around the room at first-floor level ran a gallery reached by a spiral staircase. Higher still was another gallery, and above it another, and above that yet another.

Clocks were standing or hanging wherever Momo looked — not only conventional clocks but spherical timepieces showing what time it was anywhere in the world, and sidereal clocks, large and small, complete with sun, moon and stars. Arrayed in the middle of the hall were countless bigger clocks

— a forest of clocks, as it were — ranging from granfather clocks to full-size church clocks.

Not a moment passed but one of these innumerable timepieces struck or chimed somewhere or other, for each of them showed a different time. Far from offending she ear, they combined to produce a sound as pleasant and harmonious as the rustle of leaves in a wood in springtime.

Momo roamed from place to place, gazing wide-eyed at all these curiosities. She had paused beside a lavishly ornamented clock on which two tiny dancers, a man and a woman, were standing with hands entwined, and was just about to prod them to see if they would move, when she heard a friendly voice behind her. “Ah, so you’re back, Cassiopeia,” it said. “Did you bring Momo with you?”

Turning, Momo looked along an avenue between the grandfather clocks and saw a frail old man with silvery hair stooping over the tortoise. He was wearing a gold-embroidered frock coat, blue-silk knee breeches, white hose and shoes with big gold buckles. Lace frothed from the cuffs and collar of his coat, and his silver hair was braided into a pigtail at the back. Momo had never seen such a costume before, though anyone less ignorant would at once have recognized it as the height of fashion two centuries earlier.

“Well,” said the old gentleman, still bending over the tortoise, “is she here? Where is she, then?”

He donned a small pair of eyeglasses like old Beppo’s, except that these were gold-rimmed, and peered about him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.