世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第3章Part 3

One night about the time that Rebeca was cured of the vice of eating earth and was brought to sleep in the other children's room, the Indian woman, who slept with them awoke by chance and heard a strange, intermittent sound in the corner. She got up in alarm, thinking that an animal had come into the room, and then she saw Rebeca in the rocker, sucking her finger and with her eyes lighted up in the darkness like those of a cat. Terrified, exhausted by her fate, Visitación recognized in those eyes the symptoms of the sickness whose threat had obliged her and her brother to exile themselves forever from an ageold kingdom where they had been prince and princess. It was the insomnia plague.
Cataure, the Indian, was gone from the house by morning. His sister stayed because her fatalistic heart told her that the lethal sickness would follow her, no matter what, to the farthest corner of the earth. No one understood Visitación's alarm. "If we don't ever sleep again, so much the better," José Arcadio Buendía said in good humor. "That way we can get more out of life." But the Indian woman explained that the most fearsome part of the sickness of insomnia was not the impossibility of sleeping, for the body did not feel any fatigue at all, but its inexorable evolution toward a more critical manifestation: a loss of memory. She meant that when the sick person became used to his state of vigil, the recollection of his childhood began to be erased from his memory, then the name and notion of things, and finally the identity of people and even the awareness of his own being, until he sank into a kind of idiocy that had no past. José Arcadio Buendía, dying with laughter, thought that it was just a question of one of the many illnesses invented by the Indians' superstitions. But úrsula, just to be safe, took the precaution of isolating Rebeca from the other children.
After several weeks, when Visitación's terror seemed to have died down, José Arcadio Buendía found himself rolling over in bed, unable to fall asleep. úrsula, who had also awakened, asked him what was wrong, and he answered: "I'm thinking about Prudencio Aguilar again." They did not sleep a minute, but the following day they felt so rested that they forgot about the bad night. Aureliano commented with surprise at lunchtime that he felt very well in spite of the fact that he had spent the whole night in the laboratory gilding a brooch that he planned to give to úrsula for her birthday. They did not become alarmed until the third day, when no one felt sleepy at bedtime and they realized that they had gone more than fifty hours without sleeping.
"The children are awake too," the Indian said with her fatalistic conviction. "Once it gets into a house no one can escape the plague."

雷貝卡擺脫了惡劣的泥土嗜好，移居阿瑪蘭塔和阿卡蒂奧的房間之後，有一天夜裏，跟孩子們在一起的印第安女人偶然醒來，聽到犄角里斷續地發出一種古怪的聲音。她吃驚地從牀上一躍而起，擔心什麼牲畜鑽進了屋子，接着便看見雷貝卡坐在搖椅裏，把一個指頭塞在嘴裏；在黑暗中，她的兩隻眼睛象貓的眼睛一樣閃亮。維希塔香嚇得發呆，在姑娘的眼睛裏，她發現了某種疾病的徵狀，這種疾病的威脅曾使她和弟弟永遠離開了那個古老的王國，他倆還是那兒的王位繼承人咧。這兒也出現了失眠症。
還沒等到天亮，印第安人卡塔烏爾就離開了馬孔多。他的姐姐卻留了下來，因爲宿命論的想法暗示她，致命的疾病反正會跟着她的，不管她逃到多遠的地方。然而，誰也不瞭解維希塔香的不安。“咱們永遠不可睡覺嗎？那就更好啦，”霍·阿·布恩蒂亞滿意他說。“咱們可從生活中得到更多的東西。”可是印第安女人說明：患了這種失眠症，最可怕的不是睡不着覺，因爲身體不會感到疲乏；最糟糕的是失眠症必然演變成健忘症。她的意思是說，病人經常處於失眠狀態，開頭會忘掉童年時代的事兒，然後會忘記東西的名稱和用途，最後再也認不得別人，甚至意識不到自己的存在，失去了跟往日的一切聯繫，陷入一種白癡似的狀態。霍·阿·布恩蒂亞哈哈大笑，差點兒沒有笑死，他得出結論說，迷信的印第安人捏造了無數的疾病，這就是其中的一種。可是爲了預防萬一，謹慎的烏蘇娜就讓雷貝卡跟其他的孩子隔離了。
過了幾個星期，維希塔香的恐懼過去之後，霍·阿·布恩蒂亞夜間突然發現自己在牀上翻來覆去合不上眼。烏蘇娜也沒睡着，問他是怎麼回事，他回答說：“我又在想普魯登希奧啦。”他倆一分鐘也沒睡着，可是早上起來卻是精神飽滿的，立即忘了惡劣的夜晚。吃早飯時，奧雷連諾驚異地說，他雖在試驗室星呆了整整一夜，可是感到自己精神挺好，——他是在試驗室裏給一枚胸針鍍金，打算把它當做生日禮物送給烏蘇娜。然而，誰也沒有重視這些怪事，直到兩天以後，大家仍在牀上合不了眼，才知道自己已經五十多個小時沒有睡覺了。
“孩子們也沒睡着。這種疫病既然進了這座房子，誰也逃避不了啦，”印第安女人仍用宿命論的口吻說。