THRILLER: The Galilee Plot: (International Biological Terror, The Mossad, and... A Self-contended Couple) Read Online Free PDF Page B

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zero. And because this original and creative mark had no verbal definition, it
stayed on my record in its primal form, from the ninth to the twelfth grade.
    And here I had to suffer,
and it was real physical suffering – on account of this particular penchant of
my wife, not quite feminine in my humble opinion. (I told her this repeatedly
and with excessive emphasis, but to no avail.) My wife would run to the set,
switch it on and sit down facing the screen as if hypnotised, at all hours of
the day. And just as passive smoking can lead to passive nicotine poisoning, so
there are lethal passive toxins in television-watching, especially if two
people are together in the confined space of a hotel room, for hour after hour,
as the set exudes its poison. To me, the whole business looks primitive, at
best infantile. Running long distances, winning medals, and indulging in
perverted national pride. And what about all those who haven’t won medals? And
the most important accolade is providing the excuse for the playing of the
national anthem of the state that you represent. As the anthem is being played,
a carefully regulated scenario is taking place. Facing the medal-winner, on a
tall mast, his country’s flag is hoisted. He fixes his gaze on it, in serious
and well rehearsed style, as if seeing it for the first time in his life, and
as the first note of the anthem rings out, both his eyes, simultaneously fill
with clearly visible moisture. Only Russian women have invented an alternative
scenario for themselves, more convenient and more appropriate to their
semi-Asiatic temperament. One of them, from Belarus, started weeping while the
flag was still being hoisted, and when the piece of coloured cloth reached the
top of the mast, the lady broke into such a paroxysm of sobs that her
neighbours on the podium had to support her, lest she collapse under the weight
of her emotion. Truly, an infantile display of an infantile phenomenon. I
almost learned the American anthem by heart, as it was played with such
frequency, dutifully serenading the American athletes, waving their medals for
the cameras. I learnt it in a dispassionate way, not at all willingly. Passive
viewing.
    I also filled some gaps in
my knowledge, since were it not for sport, of which my wife turned out to be an
enthusiastic devotee, I would not have known that the Bahamas have a national
anthem. Admittedly, the Bahamian anthem was played only once, as were, at best,
the original anthems of other countries similar to it. Not one of them has
stuck in my memory.
    Female tennis players,
despite all the hard work, vision and artistry invested in their tough and
exhausting game, cherish a reservoir of blind hatred for one another, and if it
were possible to attack one another, there is not a shadow of doubt that
without the slightest twinge of conscience, they would rip out their rivals’
eyes with their fingernails.
    And something else: in
sport there are competitors and rivals, but no “partners” or “colleagues”. From
an educational point of view, it would be very desirable to ban certain games,
which are not games but a distant relic of gladiatorial combat and the kind of
effervescent venomous hatred, primitive and lethal, that people try in vain to
cope with. And here is sport, nourishing it as a poisonous snake nourishes her
offspring.
    My wife showed a lively
and inexorable interest in a tennis player of Swiss origin, Roger Federer. I
felt obliged to take an interest in him too, and once again I was made aware of
my wife’s superior tastes, and this is not just self-congratulation.
    This young man is
remarkable for some rare traits of personality, including an impressive degree
of humility, alongside generosity and commitment to the objective, namely
victory achieved not for the sake of self-aggrandisement. He plays the creative
game of a white prince of sport. And he always wins. And it seems to me, that
his competitors feel respect for him if in spite of