Of all the remarkable houses in the town, the Green Storehouse is the most remarkable.
The Green Storehouse is a tall warehouse with low-ceilinged rooms and lots of steps. It smells everywhere of tar and ropes, of varnish and tobacco and spit from chewing tobacco.
In one of the rooms there is a little cubicle full of glass splinters. This is the Glass Room. Here stands the Window Man, cutting glass with a diamond that he has hanging in a string around his neck so that no one can come and steal it from him, for a diamond is the most precious thing in the world.
The Window Man is a pale, serious man with red eyes and a red nose.
The Window Man has had a sad fate.
“What’s a sad fate?”
“It’s when you’ve lost all you love.”
“Has the Window Man lost his diamond?”
“No, but he’s lost five of his six children; they all died of consumption. And the Window Man’s wife died of consumption. Little Angelica’s all he’s got left now.”
“Sad fate.”
When the Window Man has scratched the glass with his diamond and carefully breaks off a piece to make a window pane, the glass says “sad”.
***
Ole Morske hangs out here in the Storehouse. He sits in a huge room right up at the top under the big skylight. That’s the Sail Loft. He sits there with the edging of a sail over his knees like a huge duvet. He is a sailmaker. He doesn’t answer when you ask him about anything, and so no one talks to him. But then he talks to himself and says strange things.
“She touched me to do me harm.”
“They’ve killed a lot in that way.”
Ole Morske builds small ships. He has several lovely ships standing on a shelf, schooners and sloops, fully rigged and shining with varnish and paint. Anton, the warehouse clerk, takes you up into the Sail Loft one day and shows you these fine ships. Ole Morske sits sewing a sail; all you see is the back of his woollen jersey and the old crumpled cloth hat he always wears.
In a corner of the big room stands Rydberg’s Horn. Rydberg’s Horn is a fog horn; it has a green horn and a handle, and when the handle is turned it makes a sound that is so terrible that you can go mad from hearing it.
“Is it Rydberg’s Horn that made Ole Morske mad?”
“Ole Morske’s not mad; he’s just odd. He became odd when his wife ran away from him. He was quite out of his mind for a time then.”
“What’s mind?”
“It’s what you think with.”
“Did Ole Morske think a lot about his wife?”
Aunt Nanna purses her lips and blows in your face: “Yes.”
One day, Anton came with two little ships, presents for you from Ole Morske. You were so incredibly happy at this and insisted on going up into the Sail Loft to thank him. He said nothing, and neither did he look at you, but his stubbly face was one big smile.
***
The Window Man often goes to the churchyard and potters around his six graves. Angelica goes with him and wanders around collecting mother-of-pearl from the crushed shells between the graves.
But early one morning, all the lowest panes of the church windows have been smashed, and the Window Man sits on the church doorstep with bleeding hands, swinging the diamond backwards and forwards like a pendulum.
“Poor man. Now little Angelica’s dead as well, and he’s gone completely out of his mind.”
“Sad fate, sad fate.”
(The Window Man got his mind back, but he’s not the Window Man any longer, just an ordinary joiner, for he can’t stand the sight of glass.)
***
That was the Glass Room and the Sail Loft. Then there’s the Compass Room in the deep Storehouse cellar. This is where the Ship Men sit around a little table, drinking beer from blue tankards. They sit and laugh and thump the table and sometimes they quarrel and fight. But sometimes they sing and are happy.
The Ship Men are father’s men, and you know them well. They sharpen your pencil, which is red at one end and blue at the other, and one of them can draw bearded faces with pipes in their mouths.
Sometimes there are also strangers sitting around the table in the compass room. One day, they are Frenchmen; they have black beards and the whites of their eyes are very white. Some of them are wearing flat red bonnets, and some have silver crosses in chains around their necks.
The Frenchmen have caught a dead man in their net, a corpse. No one knows who the dead man is.
The corpse has been put in the church and is to be buried. It’s very sad, but the Frenchmen aren’t sad; they are merry and make a din and sing about how they were enjoying themselves. They are happy because it’s not them who are dead and turned into corpses.
The corpse was buried the next day, but by then the Frenchmen had gone. But nevertheless a lot of people accompanied the dead stranger to the grave, and Mother was one of them.
“For it could have been any of us. It could have been your father.”
***
That was the Compass Room. Then there is the Bedroom.
The Bedroom is a small wallpapered room high up in the southern end of the Storehouse. There is nothing here except a dusty table and an old blackened mirror on the wall above the table.
“Who sleeps here?”
“Nobody.”
When you look at yourself in the black mirror, you don’t see yourself: all you see is a grey shadow. That is Nobody.
Nobody sits on the empty table. Nobody stands at the gable window and looks out across the bay with its boats and ships and out across the sea and the horizon.
Behind the horizon lies the Big World, which Nobody can see. That’s where the Eiffel Tower is and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and further away there are the Egyptian Pyramids and the Tower of Babel, and furthest away of all, the Tower at the End of the World.
During the night, the half moon drifts slowly across the heavens like a capsized boat with no crew.
That’s when Nobody opens the window and stands and stretches. He stretches his long arms out like wings and floats out into the night and looks in through all the bedroom windows, and if you are lying there awake and outside the window can see a face with big sad eyes, that is Nobody.
That’s when Nobody smiles at you for a moment, lonely and poor, before he floats further off across the world with its towers and spires and further on through the cold rooms beneath the stars by the Furthermost Edge.
Afterwards, he comes back to his bedroom with its faded and discoloured wallpaper. Here he sits on the table beneath the black mirror, huddled up, with long arms round his bent knees.