A Nail on the Wall

Here’s an old Chassidic parable whose origin I don’t know:

A rich miser who was an elderly bachelor went to the local matchmaker and asked the latter to find a suitable match for him.

“Match for you?!” exclaimed the matchmaker. “No women would agree to sleep in the back-room warehouse of your store like you do. A wife wants a normal house. Show me that you have one, and I’ll find a good match for you, provided that you give me suitable guarantees that you’ll pay my fee – the whole town knows about your terrible reputation when it comes to money…”

“No problem,” said the miser. “I’ll be back shortly with the keys to a splendid villa.”

The miser visited an acquaintance, also an infamous pinch-penny with a pocket that no charitable cause ever succeeded in opening. The acquaintance, who we’ll call “Scrooge”, lived in a beautiful house on a hill. Scrooge’s wife knew how to extract the gold rubles for the things she wanted.

That same evening, Miser knocked on Scrooge’s door. “Come in, my friend,” Scrooge greeted the guest. “What can I do for you?”

“How much do you estimate that your home is worth?” asked Miser.

Scrooge, thinking that Miser wanted to purchase it, quoted him a price that was ten-times above the market value. “It’s worth an easy million gold rubles.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Miser, “There’s probably room on your walls to hang a million nails; so, one million gold rubles divided by one million nails equals one ruble per nail. I would like to purchase the amount of space on your wall in your home to hang one nail, and for that privilege, I’m willing to pay your exaggerated asking price of one gold ruble.”

“You must be crazy,” said Scrooge, “because the privilege of hanging a nail on my lovely aristocratic wall has an additional intrinsic value – I’ll have to charge you one hundred gold rubles.”

Great, thought Miser – he has already agreed to sell me the space; now, I’ll simply haggle about the price.

Scrooge thought that he had made a great deal when he finally compromised with Miser for the price of ten gold rubles. What’s more, Miser committed to pay the legal expenses of composing a proper contract and having it approved by the local religious court.

The legal contract, signed and sealed when Miser paid Scrooge the ten gold rubles in the office of the religious court judge, empowered Miser to hang one nail in Scrooge’s mansion and to use that nail as he saw fit. Scrooge was delighted that he now had ten more gold rubles jingling in his pocket without giving hardly anything in return, or so he thought…

That night at midnight, a hard knocking on the front door awakened Scrooge and his wife. “Who’s there?” they yelled, grumpily.

“It’s me, Miser – please open the door – I want to hang my hat on my nail on the wall.”

“What, at this ungodly hour?” Scrooge protested.

“A contract is a contract – ‘use as I see fit’ says our contract. Please open the door.” Scrooge had no choice.

The coming days were purgatory for Scrooge and his family. They had no privacy. Miser would disturb them morning and night. He’d hang up his hat, then take his hat. He’d hang his coat, then take his coat. This went on and on, until…

One day, Scrooge and his wife smelled a suffocating stench coming from the foyer of their mansion where Miser’s nail in the wall was. Strange, Miser hadn’t knocked on the door for three days now, but he left a burlap sack on the nail. Scrooge peered inside the sack, and to his utter alarm, saw the corpse of a dead cat, covered with vermin, worms, fleas and maybe even bats and demons…

With a shriek, Scrooge threw the sack out and burned it. An hour later, Miser returned, knocked on the door and demanded his sack. “What did you do to me?” Scrooge hollered.

“A deal is a deal,” Miser responded calmly. “The contract states, ‘use as I see fit’. If you do that again, I’ll have to come back with the Dayan (religious court judge) and the town police chief. Then you’ll be in big trouble!” Miser hung a new sack on the nail; this one had two dead cats in it…

Three days later, Scrooge and his family deserted their hilltop mansion. Miser, now with his own key, disposed of the sack, fumigated and decontaminated the mansion, and returned to the matchmaker with a big smile on his face. Waving the key to his new mansion, Miser said, “Now find me a wife!”

* * *

Rebbe Nachman told Rebbe Natan (see Likutei Moharan 1:112) that once the Evil Inclination gains the tiniest access to a person’s domain, it devastates that person and totally overcomes him. But, by looking at how another person was tricked into giving an opening to the evil inclination, we can save ourselves from making the same mistake.

People convince themselves that for the purpose of income, livelihood, health or whatever, they must make a small compromise with the Torah, their personal mansion. The evil inclination (EI) convinces them that certain things are harmless even though our rabbinical leaders warn otherwise. But, once the EI hangs his nail on the wall – “one tiny nail, what’s the big deal” – it ends up gaining possession of the entire mansion and the poor owner’s soul ends up with the stench of a dead cat.

So, the next time the EI knocks on your door and offers you gold dollars to hang a nail on your wall, slam the door in its face.