"Michael Ende - Momo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ende Michael)

Momo gestured vaguely at some undefined spot in the far distance.
"Who are your parents, then?" the man persisted.
Momo looked blankly from him to the others and gave a little shrug. The men and women
exchanged glances and sighed.
"There's no need to be scared," the man went on, "we haven't come to evict you. We'd like to
help you, that's all."
Momo nodded and said nothing, not entirely reassured.
"You're called Momo, aren't you?"
 "Yes."
"That's a pretty name, but I've never heard it before. Who gave it to you?"
"I did," said Momo.
"You chose your own name?"
"Yes."
"When were you born?"
Momo pondered this. "As far as I can remember," she said at length, "I've always been around."
"But don't you have any aunts or uncles or grandparents? Don't you have any relations at all
who'd give you a home?"
Momo just looked at the man in silence for a while. Then she murmured, "This is my home, here."
"That's all very well," said the man, "but you're only a kid. How old are you really?"
Momo hesitated. "A hundred," she said.
They all laughed because they thought she was joking.
"No, seriously, how old are you?"
"A hundred and two," Momo replied, still more hesitantly.
It was some time before the others realized that she'd picked up a few numbers but had no
precise idea of their meaning because no one had ever taught her to count.
"Listen," said the man, after conferring with the others, "would you mind if we told the police
you're here? Then you'd be put in a children's home where they'd feed you and give you a proper bed
and teach you reading and writing and lots of other things. How does that appeal to you?"
Momo gazed at him in horror. "No," she said in a low voice, "I've already been in one of those
places. There were other children there, too, and bars over the windows. We were beaten every day for
no good reason -- it was awful. One night I climbed the wall and ran away. I wouldn't want to go back
there."
"I can understand that," said an old man, nodding, and the others could understand and nodded
too.
"Very well," said one of the women, "but you're still so little. Someone has to take care of you."
Momo looked relieved. "I can take care of myself."
"Can you really?" said the woman.
Momo didn't answer at once. Then she said softly, "I don't need much."
Again the others exchanged glances and sighed.
"Know something, Momo?" said the man who had spoken first. "We were wondering if you'd
like to move in with one of us. It's true we don't have much room ourselves, and most of us already have
a horde of children to feed, but we reckon one more won't make any difference. What do you say?"
"Thank you," Momo said, smiling for the first time. "Thank you very much, but couldn't you just
let me go on living here?"
After much deliberation, the others finally agreed. It occurred to them that she would be just as
well off here as with one of them, so they decided to look after Momo together. It would be easier, in
any case, for all of them to do so than for one of them alone.
They made an immediate start by spring-cleaning Momo's dilapidated dungeon and refurbishing it
as best they could. One of them, a bricklayer by trade, built her a miniature cooking stove and produced
a rusty stovepipe to go with it. The old man, who was a carpenter, nailed together a little table and two