Heavenly Duties

The priest skipped his tea and evening hour of reading. He went straight towards his straw-filled bed, where he collapsed without a sound. The day had sucked the vigor out of him. In the morning he had spoken of helicopters at mass. After, while the people rearranged the chapel for a wedding he was to perform that evening, he had been summoned by a whisper to a house on the periphery of town, where a dying woman talked to him as if she had never talked to a human before. After, at the wedding the applause lasted for several minutes.