Give Him Up or Keep Him

Here is the answer to last chapter’s question — “why did he protect me.” Jacob finds the honest formula himself: the truth “would have taken Simon away from him” — handed him over to the investigation, to other people’s hands; the lie “let Jacob keep Simon.” He was choosing not between truth and lies but between “give him up” and “keep him for myself.” Nobility has nothing to do with it, and Jacob knows that better than any commentator.

This does not make the act meaningless — he really did save Simon. But it matters to see which motive proved stronger than the fear of the police and of his father: not love in the usual sense, but the impossibility of losing what you consider yours. Everything that follows will be built on this motive — the protection, the control, the promises. A person who saves in order to own does not become a villain; he becomes dangerous at exactly the moment the object of ownership wants to leave.