在抽离了爱的世界中，我们才能一窥“爱”对于生活、对于人类的意义：为什么它让人发疯、让人流泪、让人神伤，还是有那么多人飞蛾扑火般地执著相爱？爱情或许是生命的一种沉重，但是没有了这份沉重，生命是否还会完整？《谵妄》这本书引发我们思考的不仅仅是爱情的意义，还有自由的可贵。爱上一个人，其实是一种自由。如果失去了爱的能力，是不是就等于剥夺了我们爱人的自由呢？
　　《谵妄》是一部反乌托邦的小说，讲述了在未来世界中，“爱”被视为一种疾病。每个人年满18岁后都要进行治疗，除去“爱”的能力。女主人公莉娜一开始也完全同意爱是一种疾病的想法，一心想去除这种疾病，但是离她接受治疗还有95天时，她做了件不可思议的事：她爱上了一个男孩……借助想象的未来世界，此书探讨了“爱”在人们生活中的地位，没有了爱生活将会变成怎样。
　　这不仅仅是一部关于爱情的小说，它带有反叛的色彩，反抗被规整的“安全人生”，不畏世俗束缚，听从心中真正的声音，寻求人间真爱。作者以奇谲的想象、纯净的笔调和奔放的激情，讴歌了真爱的美好，热烈赞颂了自由的可贵。
　　


　　It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium2 identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure. Everyone else in my family has had the procedure already. My older sister, Rachel, has been disease free for nine years now. She’s been safe from love for so long, she says she can’t even remember its symptoms3. I’m scheduled to have my procedure in exactly ninety-five days, on September 3. My birthday.
　　Many people are afraid of the procedure. Some people even resist. But I’m not afraid. I can’t wait. I would have it done tomorrow, if I could, but you have to be at least eighteen, sometimes a little older, before the scientists will cure you. Otherwise the procedure won’t work correctly: People end up with brain damage, partial paralysis4, blindness, or worse.
　　I don’t like to think that I’m still walking around with the disease running through my blood. Sometimes I swear I can feel it writhing5 in my veins like something spoiled, like sour milk. It makes me feel dirty. It reminds me of children throwing tantrums6. It reminds me of resistance, of diseased girls dragging their nails on the pavement, tearing out their hair, their mouths dripping spit.
　　And of course it reminds me of my mother.
　　心灵颤音
　　After the procedure I will be happy and safe forever. That’s what everybody says, the scientists and my sister and Aunt Carol. I will have the procedure and then I’ll be paired with a boy the evaluators choose for me. In a few years, we’ll get married. Recently I’ve started having dreams about my wedding. In them I’m standing under a white canopy7 with flowers in my hair. I’m holding hands with someone, but whenever I turn to look at him his face blurs8, like a camera losing focus, and I can’t make out any features. But his hands are cool and dry, and my heart is beating steadily in my chest—and in my dream I know it will always beat out that same rhythm, not skip or jump or swirl or go faster, just womp, womp, womp, until I’m dead.
　　Safe, and free from pain.
　　Things weren’t always as good as they are now. In school we learned that in the old days, the dark days, people didn’t realize how deadly a disease love was. For a long time they even viewed it as a good thing, something to be celebrated and pursued. Of course that’s one of the reasons it’s so dangerous: It affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being.(That’s symptom number twelve, listed in the amor deliria nervosa section of the twelfth edition of The Safety, Health, and Happiness Handbook, or The Book of Shhh, as we call it.) Instead people back then named other diseases—stress, heart disease, anxiety, depression, hypertension, insomnia, bipolar disorder—never realizing that these were, in fact, only symptoms that in the majority of cases could be traced back to the effects of amor deliria nervosa.
　　


　　Of course we aren’t yet totally free from the deliria in the United States. Until the procedure has been perfected, until it has been made safe for the under-eighteens, we will never be totally protected. It still moves around us with invisible, sweeping tentacles9, choking us. I’ve seen countless uncureds dragged to their procedures, so racked and ravaged by love that they would rather tear their eyes out, or try to impale10 themselves on the barbed-wire fences outside of the laboratories, than be without it…
　　Ninety-five days, and then I’ll be safe. I’m nervous, of course. I wonder whether the procedure will hurt. I want to get it over with. It’s hard to be patient. It’s hard not to be afraid while I’m still uncured, though so far the deliria hasn’t touched me yet.
　　Still, I worry. They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness. That’s bad enough. The Book of Shhh also tells stories of those who died because of love lost or never found, which is what terrifies me the most. The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.
　　单词卡片
　　1.delirium: 谵妄，即神志不清，神志失常。谵妄在医学上是指一种神经中枢的急性活动失调状态，主要表现为意识模糊、出现幻觉错觉、认识障碍及情绪失常等。本书中指的是患上“爱”这种疾病之后的反应。
　　2. consortium: （国际性的）财团，公司集团，联合企业。
　　3. symptom: 症状，征兆。
　　4. paralysis: 瘫痪，中风。
　　5. writhe: （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚。
　　6. tantrum: 发脾气。
　　7. canopy: 天篷，华盖。
　　8. blur: 使模糊不清。
　　9. tentacle: 触角，触须。
　　10. impale: （以尖物）刺穿，刺住。
　　64年前，总统及其联合财团将爱界定为一种疾病；43年前，科学家们改良推出了一种治疗方法。我家里的其他成员全都已接受了这种治疗。姐姐雷切尔到现在已经九年没有得过这种病了。她远离爱如此之久，以至于都忘记了这种病的症状。我恰好被安排在95天之后接受这种治疗，也就是9月3日我生日的那天。
　　很多人都害怕接受这种治疗，有些人甚至还很抗拒。但我并不害怕，我甚至迫不及待，如果可以，我想明天就接受治疗。但是在科学家将为你进行治疗时，你必须至少达到18周岁，有时可能还要更大一些。否则治疗就会出现问题，最后可能致人脑部受到损伤、局部瘫痪、双目失明或出现更严重的情况。
　　一想到这种疾病在我的血液里乱窜，而我还带着它到处走动，我就很不高兴。我发誓，有时我能感觉到它就在我的血管中翻腾，就像某种变质的东西，如馊牛奶。这让我觉得很肮脏，让我想起了无端发脾气的孩子，让我想起那些抗拒治疗的行为，想起那些患病的女孩，在人行道上指甲抓地（匍匐而行），撕扯自己的头发，口吐白沫。
　　当然，这也让我想起了我的母亲。
　　


　　接受治疗之后，我就会永远地平安幸福了。每个人都是这么说的，科学家们、姐姐，还有卡萝尔姑妈。我将会接受治疗，然后评估师们将指配一个男孩成为我的伴侣。几年之后，我们就会结婚。最近，我时常梦到自己婚礼的情景。在这些梦境中，我站在雪白的华盖之下，头上戴着花，手牵着某个人，但每次当我转头看他时，他的脸就模糊了，就好像照相机聚焦失灵，我看不清楚他的任何脸部特征。但他的手冰冷而干燥，我的心在胸腔中平稳地跳动着，在我的梦中，我知道这颗心将会一直这么不紧不慢地跳动下去，不会停跳一拍，不会猛地一蹦，也不会旋紧，甚至也不会速度加快，就这么一直“怦怦怦”跳至生命的尽头。
　　永葆安全，永无痛苦。
　　以前的情况可没有现在这么好。我们从学校了解到，在以前那些黑暗的日子里，人们没有意识到爱是一种多么致命的疾病。甚至有很长一段时间，他们将爱视为值得庆祝和追求的美好之物！当然，这也是爱如此危险的原因之一：它会对人的头脑造成影响，让人神志不清，不能做出有利于自身福祉的理性决定（《安全、健康和幸福指导手册》或我们简称为《嘘之书》第12版中“爱之神经错乱”部分所罗列的第12条症状）。那时的人反而罗列了种种其他疾病，如精神紧张、心脏病、焦虑、抑郁症、高血压、失眠、躁郁症等等，却从没意识到在大多病例中，这些实际上只是由爱导致的神经错乱症状，经追溯都是患上爱这种疾病的结果。
　　当然在美国，人们也还没有完全摆脱这种癫狂症。在这项治疗彻底完善，以至可以安全用在18周岁以下的人之前，我们就不可能完全摆脱它。它依旧在我们四周蠕动，带着看不见的触须四处横扫，让人窒息。我看到过无数未治愈者被拖着去接受强制治疗，他们已被爱折磨蹂躏得丧失心智，宁愿抠出双眼，或试图把自己钉在实验室外面的带刺铁丝网上，也不愿意失去爱……
　　再过95天，我就安全了。当然，我很紧张，不知道治疗过程疼不疼。我想赶紧结束这件事。这个时候，很难做到安心等待。在还未被治愈之前，我也很难做到不担忧害怕，尽管到目前为止，这种癫狂病还未曾感染到我。
　　我依然很担心。他们说在以前，爱能让人发疯。这已经够糟糕的了，《嘘之书》中还讲述了那些人因为失去或不曾得到爱而死掉的故事，这让我害怕至极。爱是所有致命疾病之最：拥有它还是失去它，都能要了你的命。