Autumn came early to the steppe in 1942. At night, a skin of ice already tightened over the ground. By day, the wind drove gray shreds of cloud across the low sky, like ash from a distant fire.
Five men walked from the aul—the steppe village—to the radio tower.
Three were soldiers with rifles. The fourth was a lieutenant. The fifth was bareheaded, his hands tied behind his back with telephone wire. The wire was new and black, smelling of rubber and machine oil. The condemned man kept scuffing his boots through the dry feather grass, as if trying to memorize its rustle.
“Stop,” the lieutenant said.
They halted at the tower’s concrete base. It looked too tall for this empty land. Steel latticework vanished into the clouds, and a horn loudspeaker swayed at the top. News bulletins sometimes came through it, and then the whole aul gathered around its only radio: women clutched their headscarves, old men stared at the floor, and children learned not to ask questions.
No one else was at the tower that day.
The lieutenant took out a papirosa—a thin Soviet cigarette—lit one for himself, then placed another between the prisoner’s lips. The man did not thank him. His name was Tulegen, but it had been misspelled on the charge sheet. He was going to die under that misspelled name.
“Any last words?” the lieutenant asked.
“For whom?”
One soldier gave a nervous snort. Another turned away toward the steppe.
The lieutenant pulled the cigarette from Tulegen’s mouth and threw it at his feet.
“Five steps forward.”
Tulegen took five. On the sixth, he stopped on his own. Closed his eyes. The wind shoved him in the back, and for an instant he thought it was already the bullet.
The lieutenant unfolded the paper.
The words about treason, sabotage, and ties to the enemy sounded hollow. The wind carried them off at once. Tulegen was not listening to the charges. He was listening to the horn above. For the past three nights, he had heard whispers through it, though no power was being supplied to the tower. The whispers repeated the voices of people from the aul—their pleas, fears, and prayers. Sometimes the horn spoke in the voice of his dead brother.
“Firing squad—ready!” the lieutenant ordered.
The rifle bolts clicked almost in unison.
Tulegen breathed in the smell of cold earth.
“Aim!”
The rifles rose. Three muzzles leveled at his back.
Tulegen closed his eyes.
