But when it washed up on the beach, they removed the clumps of seaweed, the jellyfish tentacles, and the remains of fish and flotsam, and only then did they see that it was a drowned man.
He has the face of someone called Esteban.
and the more they sobbed the more they felt like weeping, because the drowned man was becoming all the more Esteban for them , and so they wept so much, for he was the most destitute, most peaceful, and the most obliging man on earth, poor Esteban.
One of the women, mortified by so much lack of care, then removed the handkerchief from the dead man's face and the men were left breathless too. He was Esteban. It was not necessary to repeat it for them to recognize him.
That was how they came to hold the most splendid funeral they could conceive of for an abandoned drowned man... until there were so many flowers and so many people that it was hard to walk about.
so that in future years at dawn passengers on great liners would awaken, suffocated by the smell of gardens on the high seas... look there, where the wind is so peaceful now that it's gone to sleep beneath the beds, over there, where the sun's so bright that the sunflowers don't know which way to turn, yes, over there, that's Eseban's village.