That Wednesday in a tiny fishing village on bare cliffs was going to be a replica of a previous one. The men were in the sea, trying to catch fish, so that their families wouldn’t know hunger. The women were busy doing household chores. The only ones who were free to do what they wished were children. They were playing on the beach when one of them noticed something big drifting near the shore. It turned out to be a dead man’s corpse. They had been playing with him for a long period of time when one of the adults noticed them. Taking into account the impressive size of the dead man, the male population of the village gathered together to carry him into one of the houses. In the light of a small number of people in the village, they quickly realized that the man was a stranger. As soon as they dropped him in the house for the women to clean him, they went to a neighboring village to find out whether the man was theirs. The women started the preparations.
The women cleaned him of jellyfish, seaweed, and crust. His clean face was extremely handsome, so they could not help but admire it. Then they sewed him some clothes to cover his body. It was impossible not to notice how big the man was. He was huge like a whale and that made the women think about the life he used to lead. He must have led an uncomfortable life of squeezing through spaces and ducking under door frames, so they started pitying him. However, in their thoughts, the dead man was always an important figure who, if he had lived in their village, would have had the biggest house with the happiest wife. It could not be any other way. He was clever, strong, kind, and flawless.
Those musings made them realize that the corpse’s name was Esteban. When the men returned home, they were angry and irritated to find their mothers, wives, and daughters preoccupied with the dead man. As if to show why they were so concerned about the ceremony, one of the women removed a handkerchief from Esteban’s face. The men, too, were in awe of Esteban. When the moment of parting came and all of them gathered on a cliff in order to return Esteban’s body to the waters, they made up their minds to build larger houses with big doors and huge windows, plant trees and flowers, and paint their homes bright colors so that other sea travelers would know that that was Esteban's village.
