Part of Him Was Glad
“It had required only one thing: for Simon to be unconscious.” The hospital — Simon ran away from it. Home — he asked not to be taken there. Jacob remembers both requests word for word and turns the car a third time: “My place.” “The words decided everything — and revealed everything”: beneath the fear and the taste of his own blood sat “something vile, honest enough to make him sick” — he was taking Simon home with him, “and part of him was glad. It had required only one thing: for Simon to be unconscious.”
This is one of the most honest passages in the book, and its value lies in Jacob not allowing himself an excuse. Yes, both of Simon’s requests were real, and formally he honored them. But the motive he catches red-handed — gladness that the other can finally not object — is the same one that stood behind three years of corridors (see “Gently Chained”). Care easily becomes a pretext for control when its recipient has been deprived of a voice. The test question is simple: would he have done the same if Simon were conscious? Jacob already knows the answer himself.
