Plague - Apr 11

Meanwhile they drank their beer, nursed their sick, idled, or ________(忙于工作), ________(整理归档文件) in offices, or played the phonograph at home, without betraying any difference from the rest of us.

Everything was ________(忍受/容忍) as it came.

Or when, quite unexpectedly, by some kindly chance, they felt a twinge of jealousy, ________(即使这种强烈的情绪毫无目的).

So completely were they dominated by the plague that sometimes the one thing they ________(渴望) was the long sleep it brought, and they caught themselves thinking: “A good thing if I get plague and have ________(因为病情长睡不起)!”

Now, on the other hand, they took an interest only in what interested everyone else, they had only general ideas, and even their tenderest affections now seemed abstract, ________(普通、没有多大意义的东西).

What with the gunshots echoing at the gates, the punctual thuds of ________(印章) making the rhythm of lives and deaths, the files and fires, the panics and formalities, all alike were ________(被许诺或是注定会) an ugly but recorded death, and, amidst noxious fumes and the muted clang of ambulances, all of us ________(共饮流放这一杯苦酒), unconsciously waiting for the same reunion, the same miracle of peace regained.

No doubt our love persisted, but in practice it served nothing; it was ________(我们体内没有活力的物质).

And, finally, it is worth noting that those who were parted ceased to enjoy the curious privilege that had been theirs ________(开始/起初). They had lost love’s egoism and the benefit they derived from it.

In other words, they had ceased to choose for themselves; plague had ________(把...弄平/持平/达到平衡) discrimination. This could be seen by the way nobody ________(为...操心) the quality of the clothes or food he bought.

The town was peopled with sleepwalkers, whose trancewas broken only on the rare occasions when at night their wounds, to all appearance closed, suddenly reopened.

However, this account of our predicament ________(只给出了大致的轮廓).