There was once a very wealthy Samaritan, a notoriously cruel and greedy man. He had a long simmering grudge with another family in the town where he lived. Hearing a rumor that one member of this rival clan who had once slighted him named Hussein had come into some wealth he was consumed with jealousy and plotted to steal this money from him. The Samaritan and a few of his nefarious compatriots got drunk one night, put on masks and rashly waylaid this poor man, beating him senseless and leaving him for dead in the ditch at the side of a road. Unfortunately, for their efforts they were unable to locate any money on the victim.
Discussing this discreetly with his fellow conspirators later the old Samaritan was loudly lamenting the fact that he had been denied his payoff, though he found the beating strangely satisfying in and of itself. Upon further inquiry, someone who actually knew the true story behind this man’s alleged new found wealth enlightened him as to its nature. It seems the Samaritan had been so anxious to beat up his enemy that he was misinformed or had not bothered to take the time to find out the true circumstances of Hussein’s new wealth.
Apparently Hussein hadn’t received the money in cash that he might have been carrying with him, but had only received a large inheritance with the promise of considerable wealth in land and property comprising the rents and leases of the businesses which sat upon it. Pressing further as to which property it was that the man was to inherit the Samaritan was nonplussed by the answer he received. He knew the place very well, as much of his fortune was tied up in the same piece of ground. In fact his entire livelihood depended on the uninterrupted operation of the businesses that were located there.
When the Samaritan asked who would get the land if the man who was to inherit it was mysteriously beaten to death and left in a ditch, his informant, knowing only that Hussein was missing not that he might be dead, replied with wary surprise, “Well, hum uh, that’s a strangely specific question but, um, his wife and her family would inherit and she would probably parcel it out and sell the pieces off to the highest bidder. His wife has no ties here and she would probably return home to her own family. The businesses on it would be dismantled.”
This was very bad news to the Samaritan because if those businesses, which were the wholesalers for his businesses, were to fail or be sold off then his business would fail to, as they were mutually dependent on each other for their well being. This meant that a considerable part of his own fortune might disappear if Hussein were to die. This geared him into high panic. “Oh no, this is tragic, a disaster, this could ruin me. A foreign owner could threaten the basis of my entire fortune,” he wailed. “Oh, I had no idea, what am I to do?”
“Well, it’s true that Hussein has disappeared and if he doesn’t turn up or has been killed as you suggest I guess there is nothing you can do but kiss your prosperity goodbye.”
But because the Samaritan knew exactly where Hussein the heir was he knew exactly what he must do. He hurriedly excused himself and ran out the door. The only way that he could extricate himself from these difficulties was to make certain that the man he had just beaten within an inch of his life didn’t slide that final inch down into the land of no return and survived to old age. Rapidly the Samaritan retraced his steps to the ditch where he had left the wounded man the previous night.
It was dawn now and though he had been beaten hours ago Hussein was still there in plain sight, moaning pathetically and very obviously near death. He too was a very unpopular man in the town, perhaps even less loved than the Samaritan, and so no one had bothered to help him, even some of his own family had not bothered, a few of them were passing by as the Samaritan ran up. The Samaritan cussed them loudly for their insensitivity as he knelt beside the miserable remainder of a man he had nearly beaten to death just a few hours before and loudly began calling out for help.
Because his fortune depended on the man’s recovery his panicked cries were not insincere, but were plaintive and heart rending precisely because it was his own wealth’s health with which he was really concerned not Hussein’s. But Hussein was so widely disliked that no one would help save him without remuneration, of course, so the Samaritan had to offer money from his own pocket to recruit a few mercenaries to help retrieve the poor man from the grimy ditch. Not willing to entrust the hospital with such an important patient he had the man carted to his own house to be sure he got the best care possible and was given the best chance to survive. He now knew that this man whose life he had cared so little for before had become the most important person in his small and miserly little world.
Some might consider this situation ironic.
When he arrived with the man on a stretcher his wife was shocked. “But isn’t this Hussein, the man you hate?”
Grumbling, he brushed by her and actually had the injured, pathetically wailing Hussein moved into their own bed, the best in the house. Then he called his own physician to come and bring this wretch back to life. Meanwhile his wife was beside herself with outrage at this turn of events. Being of no more natural geniality of spirit than her thief of a husband, she complained loudly at this turn of events. Why expend so much energy to help someone they hated?
The Samaritan was loathe to explain what had really happened, that he had endangered their entire livelihood and that of their children merely because he hadn’t properly found out the facts before undertaking a vicious and unwarranted attack on their new house guest. Instead, he pretended to magnanimity as his motivation for caring for Hussein. He said it was the least they could do. He said we are all human beings and equal under the skin in the sight of the Almighty. How dare she question his motive to provide charity to another soul in need. His wife, who knew him quite well as only a wife can, remained unconvinced of his transformation.
News of the Samaritan’s unlikely conversion to health care giver spread quickly through the town. The Samaritan’s generosity toward a stranger would have been extraordinary in itself but to extend a helping hand to such a well known enemy of his, rescuing him from a ditch and trying to nurse him back to health at his own expense was unprecedented charity for a man of his type.
The Samaritan realized this, and trying to capitalize on the good opinion of him this apparently unselfish act was bound to display to the town, had the idea that he could use this to his advantage to improve the public’s opinion of him. Better to fleece them later. He hired his cronies, some who had been with him the night they had beat up Hussein in the first place, to go out among the townspeople and explain that the Samaritan’s previous reputation as a cynical, greedy malevolent man had been mistaken. Or if, like his wife, they knew him too well to believe this scam, to at least say that he had reformed, or that he had always been secretly quite a compassionate fellow which due to his innate modesty, he had previously taken great care to successfully disguise.
Since loudly repeated words often speak louder than carefully covered up crimes, some actually believed this misrepresentation of the truth for a time. For many others, though, wiser in the ways of the world, since the Samaritan had never been distinguished for his humanity before, in fact, quite the contrary, a countervailing suspicion began to spread that there must be more to the story than smacked the eye. They doubted the story of altruism that the Samaritan was spreading around and dismissed the tales of his secret compassion as spurious.
The patient’s immediate family, whom the Samaritan despised and who thoroughly despised him in return, had from the beginning been especially suspicious of the ministrations of the Samaritan. They demanded to see their relation. For a time the Samaritan’s wife, who shared her husband’s vast prejudices, was able to put them off by saying that Hussein was too ill to receive anyone. But as the days wore on and Hussein slowly came back to consciousness, it soon became impossible to continue to deny them entry to see their own patriarch. Torture though it was for the Samaritan, to keep up his appearance of magnanimity he eventually had no choice but to allow all these other mortal enemies of his into his house as well.
Meanwhile Hussein the heir who had been brutalized for no good reason by the Samaritan, was proving to be an awful patient. As if to purposely taunt and dig at the Samaritan, he would fall in and out of consciousness. This meant that when he was awake he was a boisterous and obstreperously resentful houseguest (when he found out in whose house he was residing, his worst enemy’s, who could blame him). But no sooner had his boorish behavior reminded the Samaritan why he loathed the man than he would fall back into a coma again. Then against all his better malevolent instincts and desires the Samaritan would have to try to move medical heaven and earth to draw Hussein out of his comatose state once more. This would only which would only revive Hussein to yelling and screaming imprecations against the Samaritan again. It was the most intolerable of all intolerable situations to be in.
At the same time the Samaritan’s vicious attack on Hussein had actually had the unfortunate consequence of emboldening Hussein’s wife’s branch of the family against the thoroughly despicable man. It seems that the marriage between the two had never been a house afire and their love had never truly blossomed like a fragrant rose. Now the wife, greedy for a large part of their new wealth, tried to take the opportunity of Hussein’s weakened state to sever the ties that knotted her family to his by demanding a divorce. Needless to say Hussein’s family took great umbrage at this. And when his wife’s large family visited the ill man in the Samaritan’s house and happened to run into Hussein’s large family, quite often caterwauling and fisticuffs were the result.
This was driving the Samaritan slowly mad. Not only was he spending all his time and a considerable amount of money trying to nurse his mortal enemy Hussein back to health, he spent all the rest of his time trying to keep the wretch Hussein’s wife’s family and Hussein’s own family from killing each other. The Samaritan feared that if the couple divorced the inheritance that he was depending on for his own livelihood would most likely be liquidated to his own impoverishment.
So not only did he have to keep a patient who he hated and had nearly killed alive, he had to keep the man’s marriage together even as both parties’ extended families were increasingly at each other’s throats, both sides stealing from him and tearing up his house in the process. In other words, to keep the wretched couple together he had to keep their families apart.
But that was just the half of it, very soon, the Samaritan’s own wife, her family, and his own family were complaining about this situation almost as loudly as Hussein’s unruly in-laws. He had never leveled with his wife how it had really been his own avarice, stupidity and vengeance that had been the root of all these compounding evils. He was in far too deep now to turn back or start telling the truth to anyone now. Last thing he needed was to be accused of his crimes even as he was working so hard to rectify their consequences. Instead the costs he had already put forth to save Hussein and keep his marriage together was beginning to threaten his own marriage as his wife refused to talk to him and her family had begun to complain and plot and spread malicious rumors about in the town designed to ruin him.
So it was that his costs and his illusions and his secrets led him to continue to accrue more troubles than he could solve even as he pursued his diabolical plan to recoup them. If he had to risk his own marriage in the process, so be it, he loved his perverse principles, his own illusion of being able to control events he couldn’t control, his material possessions, his lies and his machinations far more than his wife.
Meanwhile news of all these strange happenings and goings on had not gone unnoticed in the region. There were differing opinions as to why the Samaritan had gotten so enmeshed in all these other peoples’ bitter business to start with. Some thought it must just be necessary, that these were just the type of responsibilities and complications that being the wealthiest man in town required. Others had smelled ulterior motives all along and suspected that the Samaritan was just a greedy and corrupt old fool who was getting exactly what he deserved for letting himself be drawn into disputes which didn’t concern him.
Still others suspected that much deeper and darker and more malicious motives and highly sordid deeds lay behind the Samaritan’s curious altruism that his “good” deeds were only meant to cover up but could not prove it.
Among these townspeople, of course, the longer this unsavory state of affairs continued at the Samaritan’s house many more old grudges and jealousies began to surface and multiply. Even those who generally supported the cause of the wealthy old hypocrite Samaritan in normal times were unwilling to help him now. They had their own problems in life to deal with and though they may have been willing to help the guy if his troubles were not of his own making or if it would profit them in some way, most of his associates were no more altruistic than he was and decided it the wiser part of valor to not get involved in this affair which had a wiff of skullduggery and impending disaster about it. Still others, most in fact, not willing to give the Samaritan the benefit of any doubt, began to scheme how they might further themselves at his expense.
While the city’s traditional leaders were preoccupied with insoluble events at the Samaritan’s house, mayhem was allowed to spread throughout the town, gangs of thugs roamed the streets at night, lawlessness prevailed and morals broke down. The Samaritan was the especial focus of their ire. Pretty soon old enemies of his were crawling like termites out of the town’s woodwork and underground everywhere. Many split along the general lines of the two families of Hussein, his and his wife’s, and took up arms and clubs against each other. Others who had probably been slighted by the Samaritan at one time or another but had never been brave enough to do anything about it before became emboldened by his sudden weakness and turned brazen and up front in their rude opposition to his every stray desire. Meanwhile, the Samaritan’s own wife was loudly threatening to leave him (it had been her money on which he had built his prominence in the first place) and take her resources with her.
But all of them, friends, enemies and family alike, no matter how much they disliked each other, all of a sudden on one basis or another began to find new reasons to hate the Samaritan. Part of this was his own fault, the upshot of high handedness and snobbery of the past, some was the natural dislike that a few will always take in the misfortunes of the powerful and wealthy, but all were attributable to the Samaritan’s own obnoxious arrogance and greed. So when he now complained to heaven for all his misfortunes, his tears and complaints rang hollow, and when he cried out against all the people who had betrayed him no one listened.
Still when the only real friend he had left among his associates, one of the few who knew the actual truth of the attack on Hussein, told him he had to get out of this situation, he was adamant, “But I can’t afford to lose this. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t” he reiterated in grief as if repetition of this belief was enough to secure its coming to pass. “I can’t afford to lose now, I’ve invested too much into Hussein already. Where’s my return if I suddenly quit now? People will think I am weak and think that all the mistakes I have made are somehow attributable to me.
“Besides,” he pretended to profess in sorrow, “what about all these people around Hussein who have come to depend on me? I can’t just leave them in the lurch. They don’t want me to quit. Besides this is the right thing to do. I’m on the right side of this. When I succeed at this it will be my legacy.”
This loyal henchman didn’t bother, the Samaritan’s argument being so absurdly ironical, to remind him where all his self generated difficulties had really come from. Since this whole enterprise had started with a heinous robbery of his neighbor, it did seem faintly bizarre that he should now feel such feigned sympathy for his continued well being at the present expense of his own.
The Samaritan’s irate wife, on the other hand, when consulted, challenged her husband with logic tinged with outrage. “You pathetically weak and morally bankrupt man, how are you helping anyone? You have simply taken all these peoples’ age old conflicts and given them a stage on which to play themselves out. You’re the root of all these problems not the cure. You’ve magnified all their preexisting animosities without making them any better, only made them worse, by making them bigger, drawing them out into open conflict and involving more and more people in them.
“And naturally they tell you they want you to continue to do this because all sides are using you to their own advantage to play off of you in their efforts to gain leverage over each other while they can. All sides have by now all developed a natural malignant symbiotic interdependency among each other which they are afraid to let go of which is odd, because none of you actually like each other, each is merely trying to deceive and cheat the rest. You have created a microcosm of the turbulence of the world and transported it into your own household and aren’t smart enough to realize it or brave enough to end it.”
Even arguments as apparently lucid as this had no effect on the lost Samaritan. He wasn’t exactly sure when he became aware of it, but even he, dense as he was, at some point secretly realized he had become fatally enmeshed in his own machinations. It is a sad thing which many rejoice to see, a universal spider like him getting caught up in his own webs. Still, from his distorted perspective to try to undo the mess he had made now would only make things worse for him. Every tentative time he made to try to get away from the web he was in by spinning another web to extricate himself only saw the new web get all tangled up in the first. His self interest, always his only interest, had become all convoluted in this case and he couldn’t see his way clear of it ever, no matter how long he had to suffer in it before he could free himself.
So things remained the same. Animosities abounded all around. There was no end in sight. The Samaritan’s fortune was withering away. His respect in the community was much diminished and the list of his enemies had trebled. No one feared him now and even fewer respected him. Still he could see no way clear of his sweet, silken, sticky dilemma, for that might entail discovery of who was behind the mugging that had started this whole parlous chain of events and risk the very livelihood he was in the process of losing by continuing the very means he was using to try to protect it.
But then isn’t to watch a spider trapped in its own web the sorriest spectacle of all – the gifts and skills which a spider has to use to build its webs are the exact opposite of those required of it should it ever get caught in them and have to untangle itself again. Even bad deeds seemingly successfully covered up seldom go unpunished.
