Undying: A Love Story Read online

  At hefty cost, you print your own giclées.

  You can’t be arsed with darkrooms or with labs.

  Your trusty Topcon’s in a cardboard box somewhere;

  You’ve thrown your dusty chemicals away.)

  ‘Call me when they’re in,’ you say, and scoot

  to the kitchen, footmarks trailing from your boots.

  The images are blurry. They were bound to be –

  hand-held, no tripod, in the wuthering night.

  That’s how you want it. Twenty years ago,

  you travelled with a swag of gear

  and strove to get exposures right.

  Now you’re chasing arcs of feral light,

  smears and shadows, eerie and mysterious.

  You’re ready to evolve. You’re getting serious.

  Onscreen, umpteen skies and oil rigs manifest

  before us as you sip your drink. You note

  the ones that might be worth the paper and the ink.

  Then you begin to print. Most likely until dawn.

  In your world, Art is never virtual.

  It’s physical, a thing; it can be held,

  you are compelled to make it real.

  By morning, there’ll be rejects cluttering the floor

  and you will ask me which, of several contenders,

  is ideal. We’ll be agreed. This is ‘the one’.

  The one which, when you’re gone, will bear the seal

  of your approval.

  If someone, passing by, observed us chatting,

  they’d think we’re making no big deal of this.

  A few prints shifted to one side, an omelette, a kiss.

  Right There On The Floor

  In our twenty-six years together,

  we did some mighty intimate stuff.

  But I don’t believe we ever

  pushed it further than the time

  you sat stripped to the waist

  on a chair in our bedroom,

  me standing behind you

  with scissors in my hand,

  you looking straight ahead

  at the Edinburgh rooftops

  saying ‘Do it. Just do it.’

  And those locks of limp dark hair

  that still remained, plastered

  to your pale and chemo-blasted skull –

  I took them in my fingers, lifted them,

  and meticulously

  de-sexed you.

  Remission

  You have achieved zero.

  We celebrate with a lunchtime special

  at the Thai, on the way home from the hospital.

  You order Tom Kha Gai because

  your red cell distribution width

  is now 15 (as near to normal

  as makes no difference).

  You choose the crispy fish because

  your lymphocytes are 1.6.

  The waitress pours your jasmine tea

  because your neutrophils are 3.

  We pay extra for some greens

  because your glomerular filtration rate

  is more than 60 ml per minute

  (admittedly an estimate).

  We share banana fritters because

  your albumin is 40 grams per litre.

  Brand new hair – ink-black and curly –

  springs forth because your creatinine

  stands at 69 micromoles.

  After dessert, we order coffee.

  Let everything settle.

  Your paraproteins

  are immeasurably small.

  You have achieved zero.

  Which is to say, the cancer in your marrow

  is now so shrunken and discreet

  that numbers cannot quantify it.

  When it’s time to pay,

  the waitress brings her gadget,

  looks ostentatiously away

  as you press the secret buttons.

  She tears off the sales receipt,

  ‘For Your Records’. Absent-minded,

  you add it to the mulch in your handbag,

  too busy re-reading your biochemistry,

  coffee stone-cold as you meditate

  on phosphates, gamma-glutamyl transferase,

  magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium,

  and that momentous zero,

  that conditional nothing,

  which, after months of eating poison,

  you have achieved.

  Lebensraum

  Your marrow’s days are numbered,

  your sickly cells condemned,

  marked for extermination.

  Your body will become

  a death chamber

  disguised as a woman

  quaking under pure white sheets.

  Millions of creatures, busily alive,

  toil on, oblivious of the monstrous plan.

  They’ll move as usual through your spine,

  your ribs, your pelvis, the pale tunnels

  in your legs and arms,

  and then a wave of melphalan

  (also known as mustard gas)

  will douse them with a venom

  they can not survive.

  Afterwards, when those you hate

  are history, your marrow cleansed,

  the myriad corpses flushing through your blood,

  you’ll forge a brave new state

  of no immunity.

  You’ll get your chance

  (assuming you are still alive)

  to colonise the empty battleground.

  A nascent cell community,

  fresh from refrigerated exile,

  will enter and repopulate

  your bones.

  You sit in bed, in uniform, prepared.

  The toxic swarm’s already flowing in you

  but has not yet reached its prey.

  You eat with normal appetite, knowing

  that you have a day, or two, before

  you’ll be a creature that can eat no more.

  Pale and scared, you smile to reassure me.

  There’s no going back now.

  War has been declared.

  Since You Last Visited Sopot

  Since you last visited Sopot,

  a storm swept half the pier into the sea.

  The diner where the soup was almost free

  (three zloty, with chleb and margarine)

  has closed, dumping its coarse clientele

  into history. The bag lady of Monte Cassino

  has been replaced, it seems, as well.

  Now cellphoned tourists, constantly alerted,

  chase relaxation in the Baltic sun.

  You meet up with your married friends

  who are no longer married.

  Their brand new partners compliment you

  on not looking ill at all, as you eat

  fancy schnitzels in the bistro.

  A cavern has been dug under the street.

  All traffic is diverted. You are having fun.

  You stroll around the shops, you try on

  shoes, bras, skirts; you buy, buy, buy

  like you intend to spend the next ten years

  being exquisite. In flux, Poland is in flux,

  and nothing’s certain, is it?

  Everywhere you go, people kiss your cheeks,

  plan their futures with you, tell you their secrets,

  include you in their dreams, make promises

  they will not keep.

  Only the marrow of your bone

  knows for sure what lies ahead;

  only your marrow will keep its vow:

  to fell you, to kill you,

  to shut you down,

  to make you dead.

  Reward

  London, for you, was the capital

  of Claustrophobia.

  To get there, you were strapped in a jet,

  then tubed underground

  for a journey to the centre of your fear:

  Marylebone, where you’d bob up briefly

  only to sink d
own again, down, down

  into the chamber for your scan.

  Burrowed under Bulstrode Place,

  Alliance had the best machines

  to slice you up with science.

  Starved, and dosed with Valium, you’d descend

  to the basement where they did the deed.

  Kindly staff would lead you blindfolded

  into airless realms of ultrasound.

  You knew the ropes: the radioactive dye,

  the New Age muzak, the high-tech rack,

  polystyrene pillows moulded to ensure

  you did not bend the flesh laid ready for

  the lurid robot eye.

  Afterwards, unshackled, you’d be led

  back to your little pile of clothes,

  and I would help you get back into those.

  Still woozy, with your wig skew-whiff,

  weird flushes on your face,

  you’d waddle to the lift

  and say, ‘How far are we

  from the Hare Krishna place?’

  You meant Govinda’s restaurant,

  your favourite haunt in Soho;

  home of the lukewarm thalis,

  the mango lassis in the plastic beakers,

  the spinach pie in Vishnu’s microwave,

  the hipsters and the nursing mothers,

  faded punks, eternal students,

  former carnivores, cooked in righteousness.

  Having braved your Sheol

  and survived to breathe again,

  you wanted papadums, and pronto.

  And once you’d had your fill

  of karma-free nutrition, and the Valium

  was wearing off, you’d say ‘How far are we

  from the Polish place?’

  There, you would scoff real Żurek,

  chunks of pig, and pancake for dessert.

  You’d lick your fingers – butter, sugar,

  maybe coffee froth – and I would reach across

  the table and remove, with one sharp tug –

  so that it wouldn’t hurt –

  the cotton-wool ball, specked with blood,

  taped to the blackening back of your hand.

  Each time a customer came or went,

  fresh air would gust into the joint.

  Sleepy at last, you’d say: ‘God, that was good.

  A perfect finish to the day.’

  Gifts From Exotic Places

  You have a new pal called Rakesh.

  You send him photos of Scotland.

  He sends you photos of a village

  somewhere outside Delhi.

  Scotland is beautiful, he opines.

  So different, the sunsets.

  You show him your paintings, spare him

  the challenging ones; he’s a regular guy,

  prefers landscapes to memento moris.

  You chat expensively by phone, swap worries

  about children. (When you die,

  he’ll send condolences, call you

  ‘a kind soul’, seem genuinely upset.

  ‘It is true,’ he’ll concede, ‘we were having

  business relationship and we never met,

  but she becomes my good friend.’)

  Such care Rakesh takes, when filling

  your orders. He cuts polystyrene cubes

  to fit the empty spaces in between

  your packs of Thalimax.

  He counts each ersatz Valium,

  making sure you get your rupees’-worth.

  He smooths potential snags with Customs.

  He wraps the packages in muslin.

  Seals them with a glob of wax.

  You now have enough Thalidomide

  to maim three hundred babies.

  And Rakesh has photographs

  of snow.

  Cute

  You cannot feel your toes, and so

  you walk like a child,

  that hint of a toddle,

  that newness to bipedal poise.

  You would have walked like this, I guess,

  in 1960, hand-in-hand with mummy,

  fearless in your infancy.

  Now your illness has taken fifty years

  of confidence off your gait

  and made you quite

  adorable again.

  Beside you, casual and sly,

  I keep an eye on your most fetching lack

  of balance; the winsome lollop

  that might cause a fall.

  Half a century back, you’d scrape your knees,

  need kisses for your momentary distress,

  perhaps get mud stains on your dress.

  Today, you might break bones.

  Today, your flesh might rend.

  Today, something might happen which, in hindsight,

  was the omen of your end.

  I reach out for your hand.

  You walk ahead, oblivious, intent

  on the rhythm of your steps,

  refreshing your memory

  of how this walking trick is done.

  One foot in front

  of the other one.

  Oh, my little girl, how unbearably

  cute you have become.

  Helpmeet

  These were the ways I helped you

  in the early days of your ordeal:

  Feeling guilty.

  Feeling anxious.

  Feeling small.

  Banging my head, for real, against a wall.

  Slamming the handset of a phone so hard

  it cracked.

  Reminding you that I too

  was in pain.

  Lamenting all the qualities I lacked.

  Exhorting you to flee from me

  while you still had the chance

  because I was too weak

  to bear the strain.

  These were my strategies

  for coping:

  Insomnia.

  Pneumonia.

  Staring at the ceiling.

  eBay dealing.

  Weeping.

  Moping.

  After all that, the universe went on.

  Your illness had its course to run,

  and carried us along, together still,

  with life to spare and trials to struggle through –

  Essential work for me to do.

  Loss by loss, and need by need,

  you slipped into my care,

  and, act by act, I learned that I was there

  for you, and we were in this till the end.

  Chore by chore, I earned your trust,

  and learned I could be trusted.

  My love no longer sought to cure all things,

  but went into the warming up of socks,

  the whisking of your custard, bowls of soup,

  late-night stories, carrying your coat, your purse,

  being lover, friend and nurse.

  Broken and remade, I was what I had vowed

  I could not ever be: your rock.

  Such A Simple Thing I Could Have Fixed

  We were messpots, the pair of us,

  marooned up there in Fearn

  and allowed our place to turn

  into a hoarders’ den,

  a car boot sale of things undone.

  Unread books clogged up the halls,

  unworn jackets faded in the sun,

  orphan shoes fell out of shelves,

  cupboards bulged with bumf and bric-a-brac

  (all to be sorted later, later)

  while, in the wardrobes, moths indulged themselves

  in wads of knitwear bundled in the back.

  Dust bunnies slept under radiators

  rarely swept, and almost never mopped.

  Magazines grew gently antiquated.

  Endless rolls of toilet paper, all half-used,

  clothes (unwashed and washed, confused)

  lay piled on top of what was once the bed

  of a now long-departed child. His ruined

  socks remained, and cat puke �
� vintage, dry –

  sat undiscovered in our cosy sty.

  We had not always been

  so careless, but, when illness came

  we went into retreat;

  into a space inside our heads

  we tried hard to keep neat

  while other things degenerated.

  Time was short, and we had better things to do

  than clean. Instead, we concentrated

  on the contents of one room:

  me and you.

  You read, and wrote, and drew, and waited

  for changes, good or evil, in your flesh,

  and I would organise your pills

  and regularly refresh the linen on your bed.

  This much I managed, though the colours

  never were co-ordinated –

  purple, cream, and several shades of red.

  I never asked you if you minded.

  Perhaps the colour clashes

  caused you pain.

  Unmatching bedsheets as you drifted

  towards your ultimate lowering

  of standards, your loss of all you owned . . .

  Such a simple thing I could have

  fixed.

  Lucencies

  Sometimes, the way words sound

  is perfect for the thing they name.

  Sometimes, to our shame, they let us down.

  ‘Love’, for which we should have found

  the most melodious breath of air

  such as we gave to ‘cashmere’ or to ‘share’,

  is like a dog’s annoying bark, a bore,

  ‘Love! Love! Love! Love!’ – until the creature tires

  and falls asleep, or we aren’t listening anymore.

  And as for ‘wife’ – another canine yelp,

  ‘Wife! Wife! Wife! Wife!’ – a yapping whelp

  ignored behind a door.

  Whoever thought up ‘body’ for our fleshly form

  was plainly not inspired by tenderness or awe.

  A dodgy vehicle, this word, comedic, shoddy.

  And yet, sometimes, the opposite applies:

  horror is wrapped in euphony.

  Vicious words that sweetly sing.

  What a rich, delicious thing

  ‘myeloma’ sounds; a grand indulgence,

  this cancer mulling in the bone.

  Muted, subtle in its onset,

  each darling little cell a ‘clone’, a harmony

  of dark biology, labouring in concert,

  its reasoning unknown.

  ‘Death’, so soft and moth-like, delicate

  as gossamer. And how pretty ‘loss’ and ‘frail’;

  how dulcet ‘chemotherapy’ and ‘fail’.

  Most beautiful of all are those pale glows

  revealed by radiography.

  ‘Lucencies’. Surprise! Surprise!

  Resembling fireflies,

  these ghostly holes embedded in your skull,