They had been playing with him all afternoon, burying him in the sand and digging him up again, when someone chanced to see them and spread the alarm in the village.
Is anybody from your village missing?
The men of the village went to other neighboring villages and asked the people in the villages if they were missing anybody.
The women who had dressed him, who had combed his hair, and had shaved him were unable to resign themselves to his being dragged along the ground.
The Men in the village were so jealous of the drowned man that when they came back from the neighboring villages they exploded and said since when has there ever been a fuss over a drifting corpse, a drowned nobody, a piece of cold meat.
They let him go without an anchor so that he could come back if he wished and whenever he wished, and they all held their breath for the fraction of centuries the body took to fall into the abyss
But they also knew that everything would be different from then on, that their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban's memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams.