海外头条总编审   王 在 军   （中国）

海外头条副编审 Wendy温迪（英国）

海 外 头 条总 编   火 凤  凰 （海外）

图片选自百度

英文诵读：龚如仲（美国）

中文播音：琬   乔（中国）

The Plague

By Albert Camus (France)

Page 49

Oran assumed a novel appearance. You saw more pedestrians, and in the slack hours numbers of people, reduced to idleness because shops and a good many offices were closed, crowded the streets and cafés. For the present they were not unemployed; merely on holiday. So it was that on fine days, toward three in the afternoon, Oran brought to mind a  city where public rejoicings are in progress, shops are shut, and traffic is stopped to give a merry-making populace the freedom of the streets.

Naturally the picture-houses benefited by the situation and made money hand over fist. They had one difficulty, however，to provide a change of program, since the circulation of films in the region had been suspended. After a fortnight the various cinemas were obliged to exchange films and, after a further lapse of time, to show always the same program. In spite of this their takings did not fall off.

The cafés, thanks to the big stocks accumulated in a town where the wine-and-liquor trade holds pride of place, were equally able to cater for their patrons. And, to tell the truth, there was much heavy drinking. One of the café had the brilliant idea of putting up a slogan: “The best protection against infection is a bottle of good wine,” which confirmed an already prevalent opinion that alcohol is a safeguard against infectious disease. Every night, toward two a.m., quite a number of drunken men, ejected from the cafés, staggered down the streets, vociferating optimism.

Yet all these changes were, in one sense, so fantastic and had been made so precipitately that it wasn't easy to regard them as likely to have any permanence. With the result that we went on focusing our attention on our personal feelings.

When leaving the hospital two days after the gates were closed, Dr. Rieux met Cottard in the street. The little man was beaming with satisfaction. Rieux congratulated him on his appearance.

“Yes," Cottard said, “I'm feeling very fit. Never was fitter in my life. But tell me, doctor. This blasted plague, what about it? Getting to look mighty serious, isn't it?” When the doctor nodded, he continued exuberantly: “And there's no reason for it to stop now. This town's going to be in an unholy mess, by the look of things.”

They walked a little way together. Cottard told the story of a grocer in his street who had laid by masses of canned provisions with the idea of selling them later on at a big profit. When the ambulance men came to fetch him he had several dozen cans of meat under his bed. “He died in the hospital. There's no money in plague, that's sure.” Cottard was a mine of stories of this kind, true or false, about the epidemic. One of them was about a man with all the symptom and running a high fever who dashed out into the street, flung himself on the first woman he met, and embraced her, yelling that he'd “got it.”

“Good for him!” was Cottard' s comment. But his next remark seemed to belie his gleeful exclamation. “Anyhow, we'll all be nuts before long, unless I'm much mistaken.”

It was on the afternoon of the same day that Grand at last unburdened himself to Rieux. Noticing Mme Rieux' s photograph on the desk, he looked at the doctor inquiringly. Rieux told him that his wife was under treatment in a sanatorium some distance from the town. “In one way,” Grand said, “that's lucky.” The doctor agreed that it was lucky in a sense; but, he added, the great thing was that his wife should recover.

《鼠疫》

作者：阿贝尔•加缪（法国）

第49页

奥兰呈现出一派奇怪景象：行人增多了，即使不是高峰时刻也是一样，因为商店和某些办事处关了门，闲着没事可干的人群挤满了街头和咖啡馆。暂时他们还不是失业者，只能说是他们享受假期。下午三点，在明朗的天空下的奥兰简直给人以一种节日中的城市的虚假形象：停止了交通，关上了店门，以便让群众性的庆祝活动得以开展，市民们涌上街头，共享节日的欢乐。

不用说，电影院是不会放过这种公共假日的，它们趁机大做生意。但是，省里影片的正常轮流放映已经中断，因此经过两周的放映后，个电影院不得不互相交换影片，又过了一段时间，电影院终于只得将同样的几部片子放了又放。它们的收入并未减少。

最后再来谈谈咖啡馆的情况。在一座葡萄酒和烧酒贸易居首位的城市中，这类商品的库存总是可观的，因此咖啡馆倒是能满足顾客的需求的。说实在的，酒的销售量真的不少。有一家咖啡馆贴出了“醇酒具有良好杀菌效能”的广告。老百姓本来就自然而然地相信酒精有防止传染病的作用，这样一来，舆论就一下子表示出对此坚信不疑了。每逢到了半夜两点，街头上到处可见数量众多的被逐出酒店的醉汉，乐观的言论也到处可闻，

但所有这些变化，从某种意义上来说，显得异乎寻常，又出现得突如其来，因此很难说这是个正常和持久的现象。最后，个人情绪还是在大家的头脑中占据了主要位置。

在封城后的两天，里厄大夫从医院出来时碰见了科塔尔，科塔尔得意地迎向里厄。里厄对科塔尔说道，他脸上的气色看起来很好。

那矮个子科塔尔回应道：“不错，我身体完全好了，比我想象的还要好。对了，医生，请您告诉我，这该死的鼠疫，嗯，严重起来了吧？”

医生承认情况确实如此，但科塔尔却以一种毫不在乎的口吻发表意见道：“现在它没有理由停止蔓延啊，这儿的一切都会被它搞得乱七八糟！”

他们二人一起走了一段路。科塔尔讲到他所在的社区有一个食品杂货店的大老板囤积居奇，以图暴利。当人家来送他这个鼠疫患者去医院时，发现他的床底下藏着许多罐头食品。“他死在了医院，鼠疫是不会付他钱的。”科塔尔这个家伙总是有着一肚子这种真真假假的有关鼠疫的传闻。比如有人说在市中心，一天早上，一个带着症状的男子在高烧中精神错乱，他跑到屋外，向他所遇见的第一个人---一位女子扑去，把她紧紧地搂住，嘴里大喊他已经得了鼠疫。

“好吧，”科塔尔用一种同他的语气不相容的和悦的语调说道：“我们大家都将发疯，这是肯定的！”

同一天下午，约瑟夫•格朗终于向里厄医生倾吐了他的秘密，他说他看到过放在里厄医生桌子上的里厄太太的相片。说完这句话后，他回过头来向里厄大夫瞧了一眼。里厄大夫回答他说，他的妻子正在外地疗养。“从某种意义上来说，”格朗说道，“这就是运气。”里厄大夫回答道，这确实是运气，只要她的病能好起来。

【作者简介】龚如仲 (Ralph) , 中国对外经济贸易大学英语系毕业。曾任铁道部援建坦赞铁路工作组总部英语翻译, 中国国际广播电台英语部播音员、记者, 外贸部中国轻工业品进出口总公司驻美国公司总裁, 澳大利亚利富集团驻美国公司总裁, 外贸部中国基地总公司驻美国公司总裁, 美国TA国际有限公司驻北京办事处首席代表。

有关作品: 中国电影出版社出版翻译作品美国动画电影小说《忍者神龟》（Ninja Turtles) 。

台湾采薇出版社出版、发行《岁月如重---兼谈华国锋》（此书已被香港中文大学图书馆、美国纽约市市立图书馆、澳大利亚国家图书馆正式收藏）《东西南北中国人---细谈如何在大陆做生意》《悠然时光》《如仲诗语》《My Life--Family, Career & VIPs》

中国国际广播出版社出版、发行《悠然斋诗文选》《花儿在身边开放》。

中华诗词学会会员、中国经典文学网特约作家、台湾采薇出版社资深顾问、奥地利英文网Sinopress特聘专栏作家、欧华新移民作家协会会员、加拿大高校文学社周同题作者、海外華英总顾问，北美翰苑社长兼总编。

琬乔：朗诵爱好者，喜欢用声音传递世间一切美好与热爱！