Show weakness? Or encourage to be strong?

Question

The following paragraph is quote from Martin Amis's "Time's Arrow".

"This body: his pride in it, I firmly speculate, is connected to the fear that someone might hurt it – might mutilate or demolish it. Now why would anyone want to go and do a thing like that? Doctors may want to; but Tod doesn't use doctors; he doesn't go near doctors. "You don't want to listen to doctors," he tells Irene, coming as close as he ever does to talking and smiling at the same time. "They'll try to get their knives in you. Don't ever let them get their knives in you." Sleek and colorful before the mirror in the bathroom, Tod feels pride that has a wince or a flinch it. Go on, I want to say. Mime it out. Bend and cringe with your hands on you loins. Cover your low heart. (p.67)

My questions: What does "bend and cringe with your hands on you lions" mean? What does "Cover your low heart" mean?
The narrator (the soul inside Tod's body) wants Tod to show his weakness, or encourage him to be stronge?

Answer 1

The word is loins not the wild animals. This emanates from the narrator and must be understand within the context of the backwards time of the text.. And within the context that the narrator soul is suspicious of doctors. Ideally, it is encouragement to be stronger not weaker. Tod hated doctors before. One must appreciate the comments with reservations because of the oddness of Tod's world.

*
Somewhere inside Tod exists our narrator - Tod's soul, or spirit, if you like. These two do not always sit easily together, our narrator feels separate - he knows he's inside Tod but Tod is blissfully unaware of anything existing within him. Tod is so old it's not surprising he's confused but Tod's soul is confused because he can see it's all going the wrong way. He knows what way time SHOULD be running. Tod isn't worried but Tod's soul is. Tod has no backwards memory but his soul does; confused, unclear, dreamlike memories they may be, but that soul knows there is trouble ahead.
This world is an odd one in which time is reversed. Imagine eating, imagine cooking the food you'll eat - in fact there isn't much cooking - you just get those scraps right out of the rubbish and off you go. In Tod's world most things spring from the rubbish, or from the incinerator, or I'm afraid, from the bathroom - much is rather gross in fact. His visits to the bathroom are unpleasant, and you can consider THAT one for yourselves.
Eventually, as he gets younger he has love affairs that start with tears and rows and end on platonic notes - the wrong way round you see. He goes to work; he's a doctor, but it's to create injuries, not cure them. And here lies the rub between Tod and his curiously separate inner being - the person inside Tod hates doctors and everything about them. Why? Well, clearly doctoring in this world is not a happy profession, not for those who can see that things are back to front anyhow - but it's more than that. Something about doctors chills our narrator and makes him feel an awful dread.