I named the cat Hopeful because on the first day he brought me a rabbit and we ate it with lentils. I was able to do some translating work that day and when I got back from the wine bar Hopeful was waiting by the door with an ear cocked and such a look of anticipation that for a moment, a single clear moment, I forgot what I had done. The next day I cycled to the library but instead of going to the Russian section as I had intended I went to the medical books. I became obsessed with anatomy. If I could not put Louise out of my mind I would drown myself in her. Within the clinical language, through the dispassionate view of the sucking, sweating, greedy, defecating self, I found a love-poem to Louise. I would go on knowing her, more intimately than the skin, hair and voice that I craved. I would have her plasma, her spleen, her synovial fluid. I would recognise her even when her body had long since fallen away.

The Cells, Tissues,
Systems and Cavities
of the Body

THE MULTIPLICATION OF CELLS BY MITOSIS OCCURS THROUGHOUT THE LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL. IT OCCURS AT A MORE RAPID RATE UNTIL GROWTH IS COMPLETE. THEREAFTER NEW CELLS ARE FORMED TO REPLACE THOSE WHICH HAVE DIED. NERVE CELLS ARE A NOTABLE EXCEPTION. WHEN THEY DIE THEY ARE NOT REPLACED.

In the secret places of her thymus gland Louise is making too much of herself. Her faithful biology depends on regulation but the white T-cells have turned bandit. They don’t obey the rules. They are swarming into the bloodstream, overturning the quiet order of spleen and intestine. In the lymph nodes they are swelling with pride. It used to be their job to keep her body safe from enemies on the outside. They were her immunity, her certainty against infection. Now they are the enemies on the inside. The security forces have rebelled. Louise is the victim of a coup.

Will you let me crawl inside you, stand guard over you, trap them as they come at you? Why can’t I dam their blind tide that filthies your blood? Why are there no lock gates on the portal vein? The inside of your body is innocent, nothing has taught it fear. Your artery canals trust their cargo, they don’t check the shipments in the blood. You are full to overflowing but the keeper is asleep and there’s murder going on inside. Who comes here? Let me hold up my lantern. It’s only the blood; red cells carrying oxygen to the heart, thrombocytes making sure of proper clotting. The white cells, Β and T types, just a few of them as always whistling as they go.

The faithful body has made a mistake. This is no time to stamp the passports and look at the sky. Coming up behind are hundreds of them. Hundreds too many, armed to the teeth for a job that doesn’t need doing. Not needed? With all that weaponry?