U-Turn to Hohhot

I heard this story from Alarm Clock.

For a while, he couldn't fall asleep no matter what. When midnight descended, he'd hail a carpool on Didi with the destination set to Hohhot. So the driver who always picked up the ride was Shen Hong—Shen Hong is of course a pseudonym, a person I invented.

Alarm Clock would board at Rainbow Bridge, sit in the passenger seat, where he could watch the viscous darkness come howling toward him. As the car started, he'd say, "U-turn to Hohhot." Shen Hong would turn around only to realize the direction was wrong—Hohhot is the other way, she'd say.

"Isn't this just right?" He spoke as though making perfect sense. "U-turn, to Hohhot."

Every time, without fail. Never tiring of it.

So Shen Hong would make a U-turn toward Hohhot. Xingqing Road, Xianning West Road, East Second Ring Road, Zhuhong Road, then onto the expressway. He'd always fall asleep before reaching the highway. In bed, no matter what, sleep wouldn't come—but in a car, sleep would surge toward him, like the surging viscous darkness itself.

Shen Hong would carry him into the darkness, and at the first great brightening of dawn, deliver him back beneath Rainbow Bridge. Each time he woke, he'd be standing on an empty morning street, Shen Hong and her blue (a very beautiful blue) sedan vanished, as though this Shen Hong were entirely and completely someone I'd invented.

Sometimes, Shen Hong would tell Alarm Clock stories. As she spoke, the stories would flow like her endless voice into Alarm Clock's dreams—a voice like the rushing sound of river water, a broken boat drifting on the current toward Hohhot.

A Didi driver—what business does she have telling stories to passengers? And besides, he'd fall asleep whether she told them or not, I thought. But Alarm Clock swore up and down about the stories Shen Hong told him. According to him, Shen Hong said this:

"You won't believe this, but I don't even have a driver's license. I just come out at night to practice. Why practice? To take you where you're going, of course—you want to go to Hohhot. I've never been to Hohhot. It's always that person hailing the carpool wanting to go to Hohhot.

"He closes his eyes the moment he gets in the car, trying to sleep. So I drive toward Hohhot. On Xingqing Road and Xianning Road he's incredibly restless, like a student who's failed too many classes to graduate. By East Second Ring and Zhuhong Road he calms a little. Once on the expressway, he gradually goes still as stone, his breathing growing fainter and fainter. Most of the time I'm convinced there was never anyone in the car besides me.

"I keep driving forward. At some point he'll suddenly say, 'U-turn. Go back.' Then he goes still again, not a breath to be heard, as though those words were never spoken by anyone. So I get off the highway, half-believing, and turn back to drop him at Rainbow Bridge.

"He steps out of the car like a shadow, abstractly. He drifts away, dissolving into the blue morning mist. Were it not for the payment received on my phone, it's as though he'd never come at all.

"Once, before getting out, I asked him: why do you always say 'U-turn, go back'?

"He said next time he wouldn't turn back. He told me to get ready, to check the vehicle thoroughly—the engine must be inspected, since the engine is the heart of a car. We would be going to distant Hohhot, so distant even its name makes no sense, that Hohhot. When we approach the city I'll tell you to head for the northern foothills of Daqing Mountain. There you'll find unpaved Gobi desert and wind farms, turbines whirring round and round, not resting for a single second in twenty-four hours, generating so much electricity that it could charge all our phones ten thousand times over with plenty to spare. Drive me to that place and drop me off—no one will know. After a safe journey, I can air-dry naturally there. Very clean.

"Shen Hong was dumbstruck, so shocked she forgot her first person." He told her to check the vehicle, to make absolutely sure nothing would go wrong. "Remember, remember," he said, then stepped out into the dawn and disappeared.

Just then I heard a soft purring coming from the car, loud and dense, like the sound of continuous nighttime rain in the mountains of my childhood. I opened the hood—it was empty inside, except for several cats sprawled every which way, thoroughly lying flat. You could see the gentle rise and fall of their bellies, emitting a rumbling purr. Beside them was an exhausted cat exercise wheel:

So on this night, what had driven this blue car through the darkness was their absurd spinning on a cat wheel.