ABSTRACT
After the terrified scream, silences descend one by one. The stewardess, angelic and innocent like one of Horacio Quiroga’s characters, a blonde with the sort of frozen intensity that would enliven the libido of any lovesick King Kong, begins to back away. The anxious faces of the passengers share the most bizarre premonitions as they search for the hand carrrying the gun, the knife or a homemade bomb. For the terrified scream could easily be the hysterical and uncontrollable telltale sign of still one more skyjacker or any menacing madman. An Our Father bursts, the catalytic silences one by one. The stewardess proceeds on her retreat, she has seen herself in the mirror of fear, and fear has stamped her with the lividity of a massive, overpowering fainting fit. But the skyjacker or frantic madman is nowhere in sight. Contrite, mumbled, the Our Fathers advance at different levels of faith and orality. Suddenly, light comes into being, and halogenous glare violates the retina and illumines the gallop of myriad heartbeats. The flying bus becomes a mammoth, autopsied by indiscreet fluorescences at thirty-one thousand feet above sea level. The Captain, or flying bus driver, and the Flight Engineer or mechanic, show up, and their studied inexpressivity incites an expression of cautiousness; the rest of the crew is alerted, the assault of general hysteria creeps in, grows, threatens, and the bleached stewardess is just half an inch from being consumed by terror. But the skyjacker or the menacing madman is nowhere to be seen.
