The Pebbles
By Iris Permuy
I came across that park by chance.
It wasn't on my itinerary, I didn't even know it existed.
It was a long and narrow stretch of cobbles and grass, spattered with trees. A couple of shirtless kids were chasing frogs with a landing-net, watchfully squatting down the mossy rocks at the edge of a small lily pond.
After I crossed the red moon bridge over the bright orange carps, to the left, an enclosed stone water tank appeared. There were several people perched on a fence, giggling in a beautiful language I did not speak. I slowly approached them, with the same curiosity that had been invading me every corner I turned, every face I met, every bite I took since I arrived in their country.
Youngsters and elders, mostly female, were reaching into the bars and pulling out blunt pebbles, rummaging inside the slightly inaccessible pool. But their hands were not wet, and there were no drops of water flickering on the ground either. The women were pulling out a handful of grey little pebbles instead and, after carefully inspecting them and discarding most of them, they jumped with excitement, as if they had just won a prize.
The young and the old alike, with the same juvenile joy, the same vigorous enthusiasm.
As I unhurriedly neared, a generous sign confessed to me in a more familiar tongue that some of the pebbles in that pool had kanji words written on them. Words like health, wealth, love... happiness. The pebble your fingertips unearthed was an omen of your good luck in the foreseeable future.
I looked at the content visitors once again. Everyone was going home with their luck in their fists.
Why not, I wondered.
I reached in and took a pebble. It was soft and cold... and plain. No luck, ever so literally.
I tried again.
Nothing, all smooth stones.
I dove my hand back in.
And once again.
And again.
With stunted breathing, I scoured anxiously. The evening was falling upon my hopes of grabbing a piece of luck. All my pebbles were empty.
I sighed and started walking, way more disappointed than acceptable for someone who does not believe in fate.
That could not be right. My white picket fence friends could not be right. My life choices were legit, being a wanderer would not interfere with my happiness in the long run. Meandering through borders, sleeping at airports, eating by myself... did not mean I was lonely. It was not that I didn't have a home: I had every home. Why, why that pool was so insistent in proving me wrong? Was it time already to close my inseparable threadbare suitcase?
A lump in my throat almost hindered my good manners when a stranger, more wrinkled than tall, approached me with a sweet look and a gap-toothed smile.
"Kon'nichiwa", I said, in my stumbling Japanese.
She spoke to me, in a hoarse yet twittering voice. I tried to tell her that was pretty much my whole vocabulary, but it didn't seem to bother her. She kept narrating a fascinating story about her life which derived in some insightful advice for me. The fast-paced, rhythmic phonemes were unintelligible to my ears, but I listened very carefully and nodded.
Somehow, her soothing tone said it all. And her cloudy eyes. And her scant hair, the color of the waning moon.
She took my hand and stroked it with utter fondness, firmly but lovingly.
The sun hid behind the maple tree tops and she left, leaving a halo of calm and compassion, and my fist full of words on pebbles.
Iris C. Permuy is the woman behind the food and travel blog A Fork on the Road, where she shares recipes from cuisines she learns in her nomadic life. She is a remote gastronomy, tourism and audiovisual translator and access services expert who became a full-time traveller two years ago.