Known Things

A Story by Eoghan Keegan

Ben lived in a little house on the edge of town. How little it was no one could really say because nobody but Ben had ever been inside it, but everybody agreed that it looked small from the road. Every day the villagers would walk by looking at the fields beyond, the day’s work ahead of them. The house was simply a part of the scenery, as unassuming as a rock or a beetle. On the rare occasions that it came up in conversation however, most people would wonder about this small house, and then find it as unignorable as a tear on a painting. There was a mystery to the place you could say. Nobody knew what it looked like inside for a start. Most people didn’t even know that Ben lived there.

Everybody in town knew Ben. Once you had met him you couldn’t forget him, though it was not because of charm or charisma. Ben was a different sort of memorable. There was no spark in his eye, no humour in his jokes and no power in his words. When Ben began to talk, people would nod and smile but there was no warmth in their smiles and no giddiness in their laughter, yet nobody could call him their enemy. He was not cruel or rude, and he had rarely raised his voice. There was just some undefinable lacking in him that everyone could see but no one could name.

He could be seen at every village play and market, shambling about the crowd looking for friendly faces. But though he had known each and every one of his fellow villagers since he was a little boy Ben could not pick a single friend out of the crowd. It had always been this way and it seemed it always would. He was the silent man at the bar, the clumsy man at sports, and the last person you wanted to be seated beside at the village play.

Nobody could remember a time when he had said the wrong thing, held the wrong hand or opened the wrong blouse, or remember much about him at all. So on the drinking nights when the drink was drunk and the faces were slapped it was a regular sight to see Ben disappearing alone into the darkness on his way to his little house. Usually as the night was getting late somebody stood to look for a free stool and found the same one every time, right down at the end of the bar where it connected to the wall. If you had stepped outside you might have caught a glimpse of him on his way before you saw the stars.

The only lasting memories of Ben were from the summer harvest festival. Children would play among the stalls, laughing and clapping as their games turned over baskets of tomatoes and punnets of strawberries. To topple a basket at Ben’s stall was regrettable, for the food was the best anyone had ever tasted. His tomatoes were red when the rest were green, and he picked his apples when others were just starting to ripen. To see the people queueing up and listening to him as he set the price was the best payment he could get and it was maybe the only day of the year when Ben felt truly happy. When the children knocked over Ben’s baskets he demanded that they take them for free, as long as all taken.

The villagers talked. How did he do it? Where did he grow them? Where did he even live? Though everybody wanted to know, few people could get an answer from Ben. But oh, I wish they could have seen the garden. Right through the little house there was a door and behind the door was a vegetable patch so chock full of the best fruit and vegetables that one would hardly resist seizing an apple or a pea pod there and then. There were carrot plants coiled around potato stalks growing between raspberries that leaned onto turnips and beyond lay a labyrinth of grass pathways flanked by anything from a rose to a pear tree. The reds and blues and yellows mixed and melted into one another and on a windy day the whole garden appeared to swell and break and splash like the ocean waves. Right in the middle under the shadow of a paladin oak tree was a fishpond and on its edge a small wattle and daub hut. This was Ben’s secret place.

Here in his garden Ben could be happy. He could water his plants and watch the water run down the leaves, criss-crossing its way down to the earth where he could sink his fork down and dig out his potatoes. He could sit and absorb the smells and the sounds. For its creator, this was life and this was calm. But Ben held a sadness deep within that tortured him, for while the garden brought him joy and giddiness, it didn’t hold him or kiss him or buy him drinks. It could not walk back from the tavern with him or knock on his door. It was shapeless, a different colour every day for Ben’s mind could not understand. Some days it gnashed and snarled inside his head, trying to burst out and roar. Other days it simply lapped like lake water on the shore of a forest pool, quiet and undisturbed but deep and dangerous. For all Ben could grow he could not grow a friend.

But this loneliness did not trouble him like you would think, for the pleasure and solitude of the garden was quite fulfilling. It had been pushed down in his mind until It was deep in Forgotten Things. It lay dormant as Ben clipped hedges. It lay sleeping as he pulled weeds. But when he slept It would stir and walk among the forgotten exhibits. It slept by day and rose by dream, soon leaving the lonely display cases behind to explore Half-Known Things. Here It had power. Here It talked with the other Things, things both once forgotten and once known. Some nights It would search for the door to Known Things and fall asleep to the sound of Ben screaming awake in the pitch black. During the day Ben would feel It on the edge of his consciousness, a thought half-known that kept slipping his mind, like the answer to a riddle. It troubled him, but his mind was more than occupied with the garden and so he didn’t pay it much mind. As It travelled deeper into Half-Known Things It saw that every row of things was slightly more complete than the last, and so after many years It came to the final row and the locked door to Known Things. It sat and waited for it to open.

One night it did.

It happened in the garden. On this night, a single flower was blooming in the centre of the hut. It was as red as blood soaked snow and just as startling for this flower bloomed for just one day and today it was at its very finest. Ben had given it all the attention of a lover, watching it intently and pleasantly, scrutinizing every little flaw and growth until he at last had understood the plant enough to guarantee that it would bloom on his birthday and now his dream stood before him, stalk and petal.

While Ben ought to have been elated, the sight of the flower touched a sadness deep inside. It had never occurred to Ben that he was the master of his garden, that it was child’s play for him to control its every root and leaf. Now he saw that there was no challenge left. Now that he had proved that he could totally understand a simple plant he saw no reason why he couldn’t learn to understand a complex one. Simply, he had exhausted the possibilities of the garden. So what now, show it to someone? But no, of course Ben couldn’t show it to anyone.

He thought of the roots of the plant drinking the water from the soil and the leaves breathing the air, giving to and taking from the Earth, the Sea and the Sky.

“They are the only ones who ever helped me” he thought.

As the door to Known Things closed behind It, another one opened in front. It stepped into its case and another one burst into flames.

“I am alone” Ben realized.

It had forced his soul to helpless conflict, like some whitebright meteor born of a god’s fury rips the very crust and forces the spirits to battle in the embers and steam for the most terrible fame. He broke through his door and ran wailing out into the darkest night he had had ever known, across fields and streams, all of it soaked in black as thick and deep as an ocean of honey where only the stars hadn’t drowned. He roared at the silence and screamed when it dared to stay. Bawling he fell to his knees and thumped the soil, begging it to give him the answer as he had given to it so many times, but the only sound to be heard was the gentle fizzing of the distant ocean. Ben sobbed softly as the cold crawled under his clothes and made him shake, wiping his tears with soil-covered hands as he gazed out at the starlit ocean.

“The Earth has nothing for me” he thought.

In tears Ben walked back along the roads to lay alone in his bed. Though it was dark as dark could be he found his way to his front door and struck a match to birth a flame as alone as himself, for the starlight had raged all too brightly against the black to last the night. He laid his shoes and clothes neatly on the floor and looked out to where the cliffs would have been. It was too dark to see the garden through the other window but he didn’t even care to look before he blew out the light.

The next morning the sun woke Ben early. It shone low in the sky, dazzling him as he lay in bed. He grumbled and rose to go to the shelter of his tepee. He thought he might tend to his tomatoes in the garden this day. Maybe he would treat them as fondly as he had treated his flower and they would grow bigger than the size he had gotten last year. Of course they would. He knew they would.

As he walked through the garden he couldn’t help but feel detached from what he loved, like it was a friend who had left his side. The apples were red and ripe but he wished they were rotten and infected so he would have something to learn but there they were, flawless as the pears and blackberries that surrounded them. The mystery had vanished and now he only saw machines and processes. He walked along the winding path right to the centre, to where his tepee sat, shadowed by the powerful oak. The pondwater was crystal clear and Ben stopped and sat to watch the fish darting in and out of sight, merging and dividing in the shimmering water as they passed over and under each other. How simple, Ben was thinking when he reached the door of the tepee. He looked in and stopped dead.

The plant was still in bloom. And it was white.

It was not withered like it ought to have been. It was even more vibrant than the day before and as white as cream on a chocolate cake. Ben stared, breathtaken. He knew this plant well; he had grown many of them before. He had observed each one from seed too bloom yet never before had one lasted for two days or turned white. It wasn’t that it shouldn’t have, it was that it just couldn’t have. It was not in the nature of the flower. What had happened was incomprehensible.

Ben could not help but laugh out loud. Soon he was doubled over with joy and relief, chuckling away to himself in his little tepee. Had he really thought he had mastered his garden, that there was nothing more to learn? He scorned himself and sighed a deep and relieved sigh. Soon enough he was watering his carrots, pruning his trees and picking his blackberries and all the while whistling a tune. When he finished his day’s work he looked over the garden from the back door, and felt rather ashamed of how he had behaved that morning yet as soon as he thought this he was sad again for now that he had felt his loneliness it was not going to simply leave and be forgotten. Yet he did not rage or roar, but only quietened and sighed. It was not something easily ignored.

He stepped out into the fading light and took a walk down the stony lanes, flanked by endless gates and ditches, taking a turn here and there without a thought as to where he was going or how he would get back. The gentle sounds of the sea were as constant as the fields that surrounded him and at last he found himself sitting on the sands gazing at the moonlit ocean, sparkling and shimmering like the light of some white inferno glimmering through a violet monsoon. Tonight it was quiet and content and soon enough Ben was just as calm. Between the high cliffs the sea swashed and receded and though the bay was vast he felt comforted by the resolve of the ancient walls to endure the tireless attacks of the waves. The sea, he thought however, had always been a friend to him.

Ben would have liked to have been from the sea. In there, he thought, there were no words, only survival. No sadness, only bigger fish. No matter what man did there were parts of the seabed they would never see and it was there that Ben wished he was, one cog in the great machine. As it was he was a badly-fitting cog that had been put into the wrong machine time and time again but never chipped or broken for somewhere at the bottom of the ocean there was a machine that had never run and no stone or shell could ever do the work of him, the masterpiece. If only he was washed into the ocean like a grain of sand or if only he could grip the water that slipped through his fingers and escape to sink towards his waiting destiny. If only, he thought, he could wander the pathway of moonlight, melting and dripping into its essence until he was no more, and remain eternally as white light as pure as it was true.

If only, he sighed, as he blew out his candle, closed his eyes and dwelt on Known Things.

The night after he decided to drink in the tavern. As usual the place was a packed den of smoke and smiles, and as Ben took his seat at the end of the bar the band struck their first note. He watched the first couples get up for a dance, and couldn’t help but laugh with the rest when they brought themselves and a full round crashing to the floor. Suddenly Ben was grabbed roughly around the shoulders.

“Alright Ben?”

“I’m alright Matty. You?”

“Never have I been better Ben. Couldn’t get a dance off you could I?”

Ben only smiled.

“Not there yet? Davren, get this man a drink on me!”

Ben wondered how he wasn’t able to call even Davren a friend at this stage, how many nights had he sat in this stool watching him work?

“Charitable man” he said as Ben took the glass.

“Patron saint of alcoholics”.

Davren nodded and walked away into the back. Ben sighed.

The tavern door opened and Old Sam and Anthony Cook, fishermen, walked in. Ben was fond of Old Sam. He had helped Ben get the fish for his pond and he always liked to watch him tell the children his stories of mermaids and krakens. Tonight though, Sam was quiet. He hadn’t said a word or supped his pint by the time the band finished their final song. Next to him the rest of the town’s fishermen shared nervous glances as they listened to Anthony. The unease was growing, Ben could see, and was starting to upset some of the men when Old Sam cleared his throat, silencing them all.

“It wasn’t natural. We went out in calm seas, same as we always do, without a cloud in the sky. The night was perfect. I don’t know how, but I closed my eyes for a second and when I opened them it was black dark. Just like that. The sea was swelling all around us, and waves to but there wasn’t a wind.”

He shook his head and took a long drink.

“I didn’t even see the first wave when it hit the boat. I managed to hold on to the rail, thanks be to God, but Anthony was gone. I could see him afloat a good thirty yards away but I hadn’t a chance to even shout out to him when I got hit, straight off of the boat into the ocean and now, those seas were rough. I thought that was it for both of us. We were miles out like, we had planned to stay out overnight. And now, I wake up on the beach this morning with Anthony beside me and the boat unharmed and the sea as calm as it ever was. It doesn’t make any sense. Waves like that should have torn the boat in two and us with it. It’s not right. There was no wind. No clouds, nothing. Storms don’t work like that.”

Anthony shook as he spoke. “We’ll still be out tomorrow. No choice.”

The fishermen looked nervously at each other and one spoke. “It’s been all good weather this past while. I know that what happened to you is more than simple bad weather can be, but I’d put it down to the sea being the sea. You can’t control that power.”

“I know lad” sighed Old Sam.

Ben felt sick as he listened to the story. He thought of himself asking the Sea to save him. What if he had woken the anger of the Sea? What had he expected, that the world would go out of its way for one lonely soul? He should not have dared to ask even once. What if he had woken the anger of the Sea? What if Old Sam never went to sea again?

He sighed a true sigh for all the Things he had ever known, half known or forgotten. If all the world had turned on him there was only one thing left to do.

Now the pub was far out of mind and but for the moon and the blanket of stars Ben would have stumbled like a blind man through the black silhouettes of the world, jagged and irregular like the beaten fortifications of some fallen civilization. All was silent except the scraping and brushing of his feet over stone, then grass, then stone again. There were no creatures but him, as if death had looked the wrong way at the wrong time and one, he, had escaped into its dream though only to find itself looking for the end.

Ben gently kicked the empty air under his feet and curled his hands over the edge. The sea would one day shatter the cliffs, he thought, and he would fall with the cliffs or heave with the waves. The far below sea glittered with infinite lights, all the lives that ever were flashing in the space of a second, every second, except his. Ben was not from the sea but he could yet be a part of it. With this, he pushed himself off of the cliff.

Rushing, shaking, roaring wind in his ears, in his face, in his mind. The world was all a blur that hurled its anger at him. Next there would be a pitiless smack that would break his body and death would find him. Soon he would glitter with the rest and become one with the world, one with the garden.

Rushing, shaking, roaring, blur. Would the world remember how he had angered it? Would he be forgiven in death? It did not matter. He had found death, so it was complete.

He was close to it now, he could feel the roar all around.

But it yet it did not come. He was lifted now, higher and higher, until the cliffs and the sea were so far he sit could on the stars and wonder about touching the Earth. But what was happening to the Earth? There was black now spreading over the green, crawling its way around the globe in a frenzy of squirming hands until all of it was gone, except for a miniscule patch, so small yet as unignorable as a tear on a painting.

Down now he was taken, closer, until he saw an old man working, clipping and sowing just like he had. There were no creatures in the black but here there was one left in the last patch of green, and in that patch there was all of nature huddled within the walls, protected by the man. There were blooms and flowers more beautiful than he had ever seen, colours glowing like never before, and when the old man slept it never was dark. Ben knew it was him.

Away he was pulled again, back to the stars to see the walls of his garden shatter and the black planet fill with green. He brushed the canvas of the Earth with mountains, rivers and forests and in that victorious nature the old man grew the life that would keep it after him. He was the last and the first, and all the world was his garden. That was a Known Thing.

Now the Wind took Ben down until he could see the world again, but it was not the green world but his own one. He flew by over cliffs but he was not laid there, nor at the tavern, but was set down to rest in his garden and there Ben laughed for the things he knew. He laughed until the flowers bloomed and the fruits ripened. He laughed until the leaves fell all around him. He laughed until the grass grew higher than his oak, and then he laughed some more.

And then he got to work.