The procession marched along a smoldering maize field. The stubble was set ablaze in early March to get the soil ready for sowing. The townsfolk of Güémez—some eager for further intellectual stimulation, some not having anything better to do—had exited the temple and gone to see the man who sat on a rock.
As was often the case on Sundays, on that far edge of the field, the man found himself surrounded by a crowd eager to be amused by his ramblings—and the ensuing heckling.
“We do what we do ‘cause we are what we are. We are what we are ‘cause we do what we do,” he said.
Some of the adults assented. A child scratched his chin. A red-billed pigeon cooed overhead.
“Problem is, by the time we start doing, we’ve already been. Been for a while.”
An older woman, frowning, eyes narrowed, raised her hand. “Wouldn’t that mean that if I do something different, I’d also become a different person?”
“Would you? Doing something different totally sounds like something you would do.”
A child stepped forward and planted himself a yard away from the man.
“What if I do something I’d never do, just to turn into a different person?”
The red-billed pigeon landed on a nopal next to the rock.
“You know, there’s an answer to that, but I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Cup-a-coo, cup-a-coo,” the pigeon said.
“I don’t know. I just don’t want to. I really wish I were the kind of person who’d want to want to tell you.”
“Can’t you just choose to want to tell me?”
“Oof, sorry, kid. I really wish—” The red-billed pigeon pecked at the philosopher’s scalp. He swatted at it twice, then abdicated to the bird. “—that I were the kind of person who’d want to choose to want to tell you.”
“But—”
“Alas, I’m not.”
A rock came flying from the rear of the crowd and struck the philosopher in the temple.
He died of a brain hemorrhage later that day.
— Bastian Espada