The fellow who couldn’t stand himself

The brewer always sent his youngest hand downstairs whenever something heavy needed lifting. He called that gaining experience.

When something tasty needed tasting upstairs, the boy did not yet have enough experience.

One morning, another hand did not come back up from the cellar. The brewer called through the hatch that sleeping during working hours would be docked from his wages. No answer came.

He sent a second man.

He stayed down there too.

Then the brewer counted his staff. After that he counted his barrels. He decided that something had to be done.

In the Utrecht brewery cellar lived a basilisk. For anyone who has never met one: that is the most sensible thing you can do with a basilisk. The beast looked like a lizard that had dressed up to frighten a rooster. It had spines, a vicious temper and eyes that, according to the legend, killed anyone who looked into them.

That last part was particularly awkward for visitors. You could not even look at it politely to say you would rather come back later.

The doors of the brewery were shut. A length of rope went round the building. The brewer stood beside it and told everyone that he had never had a single complaint about his beer.

A man with a sword offered to slay the monster. He wanted to know beforehand how big it was.

“You’ll have to take a look for that,” said the brewer.

The man withdrew his offer.

A scholar said the nature of the creature must be studied. To that end, he proposed sending someone else down first.

A third advised bricking up the brewery. The brewer thought that irresponsible, with all that good beer still inside.

The youngest hand listened. In this story he was called Teun, and he was usually the one who had to hold things while others explained why they were important.

“Can it look at itself?” he asked.

The scholar turned to him.

“A highly complex question.”

“But can it?”

It could not. On that point the books were clearer than the scholar.

Teun went to fetch something.

He came back with the mirror from the brewer’s room. It was an expensive mirror. Every morning the brewer admired his own dignity in it and then gave his belly another stroke.

“Careful with that,” he said at once.

Teun draped a cloth over the glass. He had a blindfold tied on and asked where the first step began.

Now that the boy really meant to go down, everyone fell silent. The brewer opened his mouth. No order came out. That was new.

The stairs were uneven. Teun knew every step, because he had so often had to carry something far too heavy down them. At the fourth he tilted his head for the low beam. At the last he slid his foot across the floor until he felt the rim of the barrel.

He heard something scraping.

The basilisk had seen him.

The monster stared.

Teun stood still.

The basilisk stared harder.

Nothing happened. The creature had never before been confronted with so little cooperation.

Teun felt his hands slipping along the wood. Upstairs, a plank creaked. He fervently hoped that nobody was coming to give him one last piece of good advice.

The scraping came closer.

He turned the mirror round and pulled the cloth away.

The basilisk looked straight into two hideous eyes.

They were its own eyes, but that did not make the meeting any friendlier.

There was a sharp hiss. Something tapped against the glass. Then Teun smelled a dry, bitter odour, as if an old comb had fallen into the fire.

He waited.

He was still waiting.

“Is it done?” called the brewer from above.

Teun did not answer. For the first time that day, he kept his master waiting.

Only when everything stayed quiet did he push the blindfold aside. On the floor lay a little heap of ash. The cellar was an ordinary cellar again, except that there was now an awful lot of tidying up to do.

Upstairs, everyone wanted to know at once how it had gone. The brewer took the mirror and held it up to the light.

“A scratch,” he said.

Teun looked at his master. Then at the mirror. Then at his master again.

“No,” he said. “That’s your face.”