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

Momo listened to everyone and everything, to dogs and cats, crickets and tortoises -- even to
the rain and the wind in the pine trees -- and all of them spoke to her after their own fashion.
Many were the evenings when, after her friends had gone home, she would sit by herself in the
middle of the old stone amphitheater, with the sky's starry vault overhead, and simply listen to the great
silence around her.



Whenever she did this, she felt she was sitting at the centre of a giant ear, listening to the world of
the stars, and she seemed to hear soft but majestic music that touched her heart in the strangest way. On
nights like these, she always had the most beautiful dreams.
Those who still think that listening isn't an art should see if they can do it half as well.
THREE
Make-believe

Although Momo listened to grown-ups and children with equal sympathy and attention, the
children had a special reason for enjoying their visits to the amphitheater as much as they did. Now that
she was living there, they found they could play better games than ever before. They were never bored
for an instant, but not because she contributed a lot of ingenious suggestions. Momo was there and joined
in, that was all, but for some reason her mere presence put bright ideas into their heads. They invented
new games every day, and each was an improvement on the last.

One hot and sultry afternoon, a dozen or so children were sitting around on the stone steps
waiting for Momo, who had gone for a stroll nearby, as she sometimes did. From the look of the sky,
which was filled with fat black clouds, there would soon be a thunderstorm.
"I'm going home," said one girl, who had a little sister with her. "Thunder and lightning scares me."
"What about when you're at home?" asked a boy in glasses. "Doesn't it scare you there?"
"Of course it does," she said.
"Then you may as well stay," said the boy.
The girl shrugged her shoulders and nodded. After a while she said, "But maybe Momo won't
turn up."
"So what?" another voice broke in. It belonged to a rather ragged and neglected-looking boy.
"Even if she doesn't, we can still play a game."
"All right, but what?"
"I don't know. Something or other."
"Something or other's no good. Anyone got an idea?"
"I know," said a fat boy with a high-pitched voice. "Let's pretend the amphitheater's a ship, and
we sail off across uncharted seas and have adventures. I'll be the captain, you can be first mate, and you
can be a professor -- a scientist, because it's a scientific expedition. The rest of you can be sailors."
"What about us girls?" came a plaintive chorus. "What'll we be?"
"Girl sailors. It's a ship of the future."
The fat boy's idea sounded promising. They tried it out, but everyone started squabbling and the
game never got under way. Before long they were all sitting around on the steps again, waiting.
Then Momo turned up, and everything changed.

The Argo's bow rose and fell, rose and fell, as she swiftly but steadily steamed through the swell
towards the South Coral Sea. No ship in living memory had ever dared to sail these perilous waters,
which abounded with shoals, reefs and mysterious sea monsters. Most deadly of all was the so-called
Travelling Tornado, a waterspout that forever roamed this sea like some cunning beast of prey. The
waterspout's route was quite unpredictable, and any ship caught up in its mighty embrace was promptly