Chapter 129: Global Travel, Part One

In the departure hall of Jingcheng Airport, Zhou Huimin clutched her boarding pass tightly, her fingertips turning pale from the strain. She gazed at the planes taking off and landing outside the window, then suddenly turned and grabbed Xiang Fei's arm: "Are we really leaving?"

Xiang Fei was organizing the luggage tags. Hearing this, he laughed and pulled her into his embrace: "What, can't bear to leave?"

"It's not that I can't bear to leave," Zhou Huimin shook her head, but her eyes reddened quietly, "it just feels like a dream."

As the plane took off, she watched the shrinking Forbidden City through the porthole, and tears finally spilled over. Xiang Fei gently wiped away her tears: "Regretting it?"

"Dummy," she laughed through her tears, "I'm happy. At last I can see the whole world with you."

Mornings on the heights of Montmartre always carried the scent of coffee. Zhou Huimin sat on the balcony of the small apartment they had rented, writing a letter to her father. Sunlight filtered through the plane tree leaves, casting dappled shadows on her stationery.

"Writing to your father again to let him know you're safe?" Xiang Fei came over carrying freshly baked croissants.

"Mm," she bit the end of her pen, "telling him the strange old painter next door always likes to feed stray cats in the hallway."

Xiang Fei suddenly laughed: "Do you know who that 'strange old painter' is?"

"Who?"

"Balthus."

The fountain pen in Zhou Huimin's hand dropped with a "clatter" onto the stationery, the ink blooming into a blot. She had never imagined that the old man who always wore paint-stained work clothes and liked to give her sketches was the most mysterious contemporary master of painting.

The gondola rocked gently beneath the Bridge of Sighs. Zhou Huimin's straw hat was blown off by a sudden gust of wind, about to drift into the canal.

"Don't move!" Xiang Fei hurriedly held back his wife, who was about to lean out to fish for it.

The Italian boatman burst out laughing, and like magic produced a brand-new wide-brimmed hat from beneath his seat: "Signora, this was left behind by Juliette Binoche last month."

That evening in St. Mark's Square, they happened to run into Visconti, who was filming Death in Venice. The old director squinted at Xiang Fei: "Young man, would you like to cameo in a role?"

Zhou Huimin watched her husband flee in disarray, laughing until she doubled over. Who would have thought that the great director who had dominated Xiangjiang would be scared off by an invitation to play an extra.

In the shadow of the pyramids, Zhou Huimin, wrapped in an Arab headscarf, glared huffily at her husband: "What happened to the trip you promised? You run off to the set every day!"

Xiang Fei was helping the local director adjust the Steadicam. Hearing this, he quickly raised his hands in surrender: "Just today! Spielberg insists I take a look at the locations for Raiders of the Lost Ark 3..."

Before he finished speaking, Harrison Ford's resonant voice rang out from the distance: "Xiang! Come take a look at this shot!"

Zhou Huimin was so angry she poured mineral water over her husband's head. But at the bonfire party that evening, when the real "Indiana Jones" invited her to dance, all her grievances vanished. On the moonlit banks of the Nile, Ford whispered in her ear: "Your husband is the most action-savvy director I've ever seen."

The maple leaves at Kinkaku-ji burned red as fire. Zhou Huimin knelt on the tatami floor of the Japanese-style room, watching her husband drink sake with Akira Kurosawa.

"Xiang-kun," the film master, his eyes blurred with drink, patted the tatami, "how do you think the rain scene in Rashomon should be filmed to look real?"

"Use a fire engine," Xiang Fei poured the old man more sake, "but add glycerin to the water, so the raindrops have texture on camera."

Kurosawa suddenly burst into loud laughter and thrust the screenplay at him: "Come! Help me revise the third act of Dreams!"

Zhou Huimin quietly slipped out of the room and met Shinobu Terajima in the courtyard, who was bringing hangover soup. The two women exchanged a smile; moonlight cast their shadows onto the dry landscape garden, like a ukiyo-e print.