Suddenly the man sneezed and 27 faces wrinkled up in sheer dread

    He was a nobody special, a man amidst the crowd, wrapped up and cowering under winter’s wrath, a fellow you  you might have run across or into on the B subway line yesterday in Buenos Aires, sneezing with all his might--as if he really enjoyed it, as if it gave him some deep sensual delight--and as he did so some 27 faces wrinkled up horribly, in sheer dread, in the most abject fear, terror, as if doomsday had at last struck.

     How dare you sneeze! And in public places like an ex-convict let free.  God help us! The A flu is everywhere seeking its victims. Watch out! Don’t go to the movies, don’t go the theater, don’t go to gatherings, don’t go to protest demonstrations, wash your hands ten times a day, wear a face mask, be careful with whom you sleep, pray and behave yourself. Several dozen victims already and the invisible monster is happily showing his (or her)  superiority over homo sapiens, be they poor or rich, policemen, your neighbor, criminals, judges, children, politicians, robbers, prostitutes, even priests. Watch out! It’s the modern version of the Plague, the Red Death, its God’s revenge for so much human wrongdoing. You can see it strike there on bold face headlines in the newspapers every day, endless programs on TV. Watch out! There is an invisible enemy lurking in the most unexpected hide-outs, ready to attack! Who knows? Maybe you’ve already got it! Maybe you might be dead in a few days. Watch out! Maybe these demons are from Mars, or from the Devil himself!

    The man covers his face and sneezes again, and again, as if obsessed. The lush, fleshy and sensual woman sitting beside him, jumps up waving her arms in all directions, as if she were an evangelical confessing her sins and asking Jesus to come into her life. But most of her gestures and shouts are directed towards the sneezer:

    "Heaven help us! Deliver us from evil and the Flu! Get off this train now!"

    "Sorry, I can’t, the train is moving, besides, I love you! You are great!"

   "What? How dare you, you assassin!"

    Perhaps due to the tenor of the conversation, the man has stopped sneezing and seems to have recovered his health.

    "Your voice is like the sweet buzz of a worker bea! It’s honey melts my heart!"

    The fleshy woman’s mouth dropped open for a long second, in complete disbelief. In a word, she was disarmed by the man’s words. Something else exceptional also began to take place in that subway wagon: an elderly lady, approaching 100 years of age, began bombarding her companion’s lips with kisses more passionate than those of Romeo; in the center section a group of youngsters began doing what looked like bio-dance; a policeman began reading that poem by Neruda about green love...and the man, the clear hero of this incident, opened his arms as wide as the universe and embraced the woman before she could come out of her trance:

    "Love is the only answer," he said, "to the flu and to war, to the assaults of capitalism, and to all of the negative forces that vainly attempt to separate us."

   It was at about that moment when the subway dragged itself to the 9 de julio stop. The rest of the story must be recreated by our kind readers. But as a sort of advance, we might conclude here with the headline that appeared in all of the city’s newspapers the following morning:

"Scientists discover love to be a cure to the A flu!"