Passage from Camus' The Plague

Last night I got stuck on this brief passage describing desperate funerals in The Plague. I was thinking that if someone made a movie of the book, about a town in Algeria stricken with an unstoppable outbreak of plague, this would be a great and compelling scene to open with. (Turns out there is a 1992 film, set in South Africa, and featuring William Hurt and Robert Duvall; it went straight to video. I'll have to look into it.)

Cat prefers Kierkegaard.

This converted school had an exit at the back of the main building. A large storeroom giving on the corridor contained the coffins. On arrival, the family found a coffin already nailed up in the corridor. Then came the most important part of the business: the signing of official forms by the head of the family. Next the coffin was loaded on a motor-vehicle -- a real hearse or a large, converted ambulance. The mourners stepped into one of the few taxis still allowed to ply and the vehicles drove hell-for-leather to the cemetery by a route avoiding the center of town. There was a halt at the gate, where police officers applied a rubber stamp to the official exit permit, without which it was impossible for our citizens to have what they called a last resting-place. The policemen stood back and the cars drew up near a plot of ground where a number of graves stood open, waiting for inmates. A priest came to meet the mourners, since church services at funerals were now prohibited. To an accompaniment of prayers the coffin was dragged from the hearse, roped up, and carried to the graveside, the ropes were slipped and it came heavily to rest at the bottom of the grave. No sooner had the priest begun to sprinkle holy water than the first sod rebounded from the lid. The ambulance had already left and was being sprayed with disinfectant, and while spadefuls of clay thudded more and more dully on the rising layer of earth, the family were bundling into the taxi. A quarter of an hour later they were back at home. - Camus, from The Plague