…time is always short despite the unvarying task of burying mortal remains or consigning them to the flames; the long-faced gravediggers chatted as they got drunk, they talked about the Banquet, which would take place soon, in three months, in the spring, as it had been every year since the creation of the world, where they would have a few laughs, drink dry and eat hard, and for three days there would be no corpses, because, as is well known, no-one ever dies during the Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild, for this is the Grim Reaper’s gift to the Guild, these three days’ repose, these revelries far from death are the Christmas of the baleful, the feast of Saint Nicholas for the men with long faces.
THE ANNUAL BANQUET OF THE GRAVEDIGGGER’S GUILD, Mathias Enard