In order not to insult either, she sat down between the two of them. Momo quickly realized how angry these two men were at each other, and she didn’t know which one she should go to first. Nino and his plump wife were also Momo’s friends, and on more than one occasion they had brought her some very tasty snacks. Nino was in charge of a small pub at the edge of the city that usually had no more than a few old men in it, who spent the entire evening over one glass of wine reminiscing about bygone times. He was skinny and always looked a bit tired. His name was Nicola, and he was a burly man with a black mustache that curled up at the ends. So now they were sitting in the amphitheater, silent and furious, each opposite the other on one of the stone rows of seats. At first, the two had refused, but in the end they had begrudgingly given in. Their friends had told them to visit Momo because it wasn’t right for neighbors to live as enemies. They had gotten into such a vile dispute that they were no longer on speaking terms, even though they were next-door neighbors. One day, two men came to Momo’s amphitheater. Even as he spoke, it would become clear to him, in some mysterious way, that he was fundamentally mistaken, that among all the people in the world there was only one of him, and that he was therefore important in his own particular way. And when someone thought that his life was a meaningless failure, and that he was just one among millions of people who could all be replaced as easily and as quickly as a broken pot, then he would go and explain everything to Momo. Unhappy and depressed people suddenly became joyful. She listened in such a way that anxious and indecisive people suddenly knew what they wanted. And when they finally stumbled upon an idea that they had never even dreamt of before, they felt like it had come from deep within them. She merely sat and listened with the utmost attention and sympathy, fixing her large, dark eyes on them. She didn’t ask or say anything in particular that would bring them to these thoughts. Momo listened in a way that made slow people suddenly have the cleverest ideas. Very few people can really listen, and the way Momo practiced the art of listening was unique. Now, many readers might say that being able to listen is nothing special-anyone can do it-but they would be altogether mistaken. The thing that Momo could do better than anyone else was listen.

Momo by michael ende