Part Two: Soldiers

~ Be a single voice no more ~

New York Herald Tribune Headline: Great Britain and France Declare War on Germany

September 1939

"You gotta stay calm, Steve."

Steve cast a glance sideways at Bucky. Bucky's hands twisted as he sat on the stoop outside Steve's tenement building, and tired shadows hung under his eyes, and he still thought he could tell Steve to stay calm. Steve couldn't stop his knee bouncing where he sat.

He ignored Bucky's advice. "My last letter was…" he counted, "three days before they invaded Poland. They wouldn't have shut down all the post, would they? There hasn't been any action in Austria either, there can't have been."

Bucky sighed and lowered his head. They were both exhausted after three weeks of absolute silence from Alice, and from waking up at five every morning to have this exact same conversation before the postman arrived. The postman was used to seeing them sitting there by now, and told them straight away whether there was anything for Steve. Every morning he'd rest his bike against the wall, look up with a grimace and say: "Sorry boys."

Steve rubbed sleep out of his eyes with the heels of his palms.

"There's plenty of reasons why you haven't gotten a letter yet," Bucky said. "The post could be delayed. Could have been redirected somewhere by mistake. Could be they have halted the mail-"

"But why would they halt the mail to the US?" Steve asked. He rubbed his hands together to fight off the chill. "We're not at war with them."

The news had come just a few days after the start of the war in Europe. The US had proclaimed its neutrality, and Steve had been torn between indignation and relief. Surely that's better for Alice, Bucky had said when he heard. We don't want our Air Corps dropping bombs on her.

Steve felt ill again at the thought. And yet the idea that his country wouldn't step in to stop the Germans invading surrounding countries made him frustrated.

Bucky sighed again. "Just because we're not at war with them doesn't mean they trust us," he said. "Anyway, it could be that Alice just hasn't gotten around to writing yet. Could be busy. Could be working on getting out of Austria, maybe."

If only. Steve could hope, but he knew Alice wouldn't leave. Not yet.

The squeak of a bicycle at the other end of the street made Bucky and Steve's heads jerk up.

"Don't get your hopes up," Bucky warned.

"I won't," Steve lied as his knee started bouncing faster.

A minute later the postman cycled up to the front of the tenement, dressed in his smart uniform and cap with a hessian bag slung over his shoulder. He squeaked to a halt in front of the stoop, casting a glint-eyed glance their way, and before he'd even gotten off his bike he pulled a letter out of his bag.

Steve's stomach swooped and he shot to his feet. "It came?"

The postman leaned over with the letter. "Here ya go boys! Don't think it's the one you're after though."

Steve fumbled the envelope out of the postman's hands and flipped it to look at the return address:

The Thomas Cook Office
Lisbon, Portugal
PO Box 506

Steve's face fell and his buzzing nerves went cold. Bucky glanced over his shoulder and frowned.

The postman pulled out the rest of the letters for the tenement and hopped off his bike to slot them into the correct letterboxes. "Sorry boys," he said over his shoulder. When he turned around again he observed: "Must be some sweetheart to have you out here every morning."

"She is," Bucky said before Steve could correct the man. Steve glowered at him and Bucky just shrugged, unapologetic.

When the postman cycled off again, Steve frowned down at the letter. "I don't know anyone in Lisbon, do I?"

"Sure it's for you?"

Steve rechecked the front of the envelope, which sure enough had his name and address written in flowing handwriting. Handwriting that looked familiar.

He tore the envelope right there on the stoop, almost ripped the letter within as he yanked it out, and ran wild eyes over the first line.

It felt as if a red-hot coil twisted in her gut. "It's her!"

Bucky stood up with wide eyes. "What? She's in Lisbon?" He came over and tried to take the letter out of Steve's hands, but Steve fended him off.

"It's… she's okay," he breathed, heart suddenly pounding.

"What's she doing in Lisbon? Did she-"

"I'm reading it, I'm reading it!"

"Well read it out loud, then-"

"Alright," Steve said as he flapped a hand at Bucky. He cleared his throat, tore his eyes back up the page, and began to read.

September 24th, 1939
Vienna
Dear Steve,

I'm safe!

Now that's out of the way, I have a lot to tell you. First, this is the letter I wrote on my birthday, the 2nd:

~Dear Steve,

Yesterday Germany invaded Poland. Today I turned 21. My uncle threw a huge party in one of the biggest social halls in Vienna, though it was difficult to tell at times whether the party was for me or for Germany. He kept saying 'Germany has grown into adulthood beside my niece, the two of them stepping out into the world and proclaiming their divine glory.'

I'm not certain he thinks much of my 'divine glory'.

People shook my hand and kissed my cheeks, told me I looked beautiful and congratulated me on my 'fortuitous birthday'.

To be honest I don't remember a lot of it. I'm still in shock, I think, that this is actually happening: Germany has taken Poland against all expectations. Great Britain has delivered an ultimatum, and I don't know yet where that will lead. The German troops haven't stopped.

I have a very clear memory of standing in the middle of that hall in a stiff, uncomfortable silver dress, holding a glass of champagne, thinking 'how on earth did I end up here?'~

So, that's what I meant to write you on the 2nd. But on the 3rd, four countries declared war on Germany: the UK, France, Australia, and New Zealand. Since then, South Africa has also declared war. Thankfully (more for you than for me), the US said it'll stay neutral.

It's happening. I kept telling people it wouldn't, but I now realize that was just my own wishful, naive hope. The German Army (which includes the Austrian Army now) is tearing through Poland toward Warsaw as I write.

The whole country is buzzing. Wherever I go, no one can speak of anything else but the war. Whether they're excited about the Third Reich becoming an empire or terrified of what wartime will bring, it's on their minds and their tongues.

Already things are changing. There's talk of conscription. There are volunteer sign-up sheets for munitions factories and ration pack assembly lines. Hitler Youth march up and down the streets, singing songs as if they've already won a victory. Behind them march the troops. The grocery shelves are empty. It's as if the city is celebrating and bunkering down all at once.

I've heard that the mail might be censored, and that brings me to the unusual envelope you've received. A friend put me in contact with someone in Lisbon, who is offering to forward mail to other countries. The US isn't at war with Germany, but I'm certain mail to the US will be censored heavily from here on out. To continue writing to me, address an envelope the same way I have, to the Thomas Cook office in Lisbon (Portugal is neutral), post office box 506, and write my name at the top of the letter itself. They'll send it on to me (or rather, Jilí). It will take longer, but that way we can keep communicating in privacy.

How are you? What have I missed? Have things changed much in New York?

Yours,
Alice.

Steve said that last part in a rush, as if the air in his lungs was deflating. When he'd finished his hand with the letter fell limp by his side.

She's safe.

Bucky stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the tenement letter box. His brow furrowed. "Idiot."

Steve blinked. "What? Why?"

Bucky just gestured vaguely in the air, then dropped his arm. A moment later he sat on the stoop again. "Just… idiot."

Steve sat down beside him. Sunlight began to creep through the chilled Brooklyn streets, and in the distance a bird sang. Steve felt stunned, disconnected from his body. He thought he understood what Bucky meant. Alice won't let this push her away. This will make her want to stay more than ever.

He reached up and ran his hands over his face. The paper in his hand crinkled.

"What do we do?" He looked over to Bucky.

Bucky opened his mouth, gestured to the letter, shut his mouth again. "I don't think there's anything we can do. Ask Germany to stop invading Poland?"

"A whole bunch of countries have already tried that." Steve's throat constricted. "Now they're going to ask again. But with guns."

Bucky's head dropped into his hands. "She'll be safe." He said it haltingly, then nodded to himself and said: "She will be. She knows how to stay out of trouble, keep her head down. She'll be safe."

Steve thought of the last war and how it had torn Europe to shreds. No country, no person untouched. No one could guarantee their own safety now. He held up the letter again and traced her words. First the I'm safe! Then his fingertips trailed down to where she'd written Yours.

For how much longer?

Bucky leaned back and blew out a breath. "You'd better get writing to Lisbon, then."

Excerpt from 'Culture of the Third Reich' by Maureen Einrich (1999), chapter 7 (Notable Musicians), p. 88

One cannot describe the Siren's career without describing the war. While it is true that Moser was performing in Vienna years before Germany's invasion of Poland, her fame did not truly soar until the height of the war years. 1939 was the real origin of what we know as the Siren. Of course, this was not to last.

October 1939

A knock at the door.

Alice looked up from where she'd been fastening her heeled shoes. "Enter."

The white-washed door swung open on its well-oiled hinges to reveal the housemaid, Julia. She was a light haired, light eyed girl and she looked in warily. "Your uncle would like to speak with you, Fräulein."

Julia might well be wary – twice before she'd been tasked with ensuring that Alice stay inside the house, only for Alice to sneak out the window. Julia was a little older than Alice and the two of them had a strange, unspoken kind of rivalry. Alice didn't begrudge Julia doing her job, but she did not trust her. Julia seemed half in awe, half irritated by her younger mistress.

"I'll be out in a moment," Alice replied evenly. She stood up and turned to the mirror to check her appearance; her fine grey cotton dress was just visible under the thick coat that ended below her knees. Stockinged ankles led into sensible black pumps. Her shoulder-length blonde hair hung in carefully-ironed curls around her calm, watchful face.

Julia eyed Alice a moment. "Are you going somewhere, miss?"

"Yes." Alice didn't take her eyes off her own reflection.

Julia bowed her head and closed the door behind her.

Alice's brow lowered when she heard the door shut, and she looked away from the mirror. Her uncle didn't often seek her company. They each drifted through this house in the hopes of not running into each other. But she was still his songbird, so he brought her out to parties and performances, and fed and watered her in this gilded cage. Alice spared a glance for her room – it really was very fine, with a rich blue and white cream carpet, velvet settees, an ornate four-poster bed and dresser table. Her phonograph sat on a low counter beside the dresser. Alice had promised herself never to get used to this luxury, but in some ways she had. She was used to selecting well-made, warm clothes from her wardrobe each morning, patting expensive cosmetics on her face before performances, having a maid and a cook and a driver to take her around town.

Sometimes she came back to her bedroom and it didn't feel like hers. What with the fine dressings and Julia cleaning, it more often looked like a nice hotel room. Only small traces of Alice could be seen – the copy of Murder on the Orient Express with its cracked spine on the bedside table, the pen and almost-dry inkwell on the dressing table, the stacks of records beside the phonograph (and that wasn't even counting the ones she'd hidden).

Their house in Vienna was… not quite a mansion, but a very nice house on the corner of the street. Alice's bedroom had two wide windows set into the outward-facing walls, overlooking the street below and beyond; the buildings of Vienna stretching away into the distance. She could just see the spire of St Stephen's cathedral.

Alice fastened her coat buttons as she looked out the window. The city sounds of puttering engines and marching feet were muted in here, as were the sounds of china clinking in the room beyond. It was if this room was another universe that just looked out on the world beyond. And Alice stood within it, unmoving, a shaft of sunlight illuminating motes of dust in the air.

Another knock at the door. "Fräulein?"

Alice's brow lowered. "I'm coming."

She pushed open her bedroom door to the universe beyond, and strode down the hallway toward the large living room. This was an imposing, open space with a brass and crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling and a grand piano in the corner. Tall windows overlooked the avenue outside. Her uncle sat where he usually did; in the sturdy armchair by the fireplace, with the ornate tapestry hanging behind it. The tapestry depicted some scene of ancient battle: a commander brandishing his weapon as around him a melee of soldiers and flags unfolded. It was bright-colored, almost cheery.

Alice preferred the wrought iron chairs out on the balcony, herself, but her uncle seemed to prefer seating himself amongst all that splendor and grandeur. It suited him.

Her uncle looked up from his newspaper as Alice walked in, his brown eyes revealing nothing at the sight of her. A cigarette dangled from his fingers. Alice often tried to find hints of her mother in his face, but could see none; his nose was angular, his brow heavy and serious, his pale hair slicked neatly to the sides. He always dressed in a fine dark suit and a starched shirt. There was none of her mother's kindness or bravery in his expression, none of her sadness either. Alice would have to remain comforted by the fact that people often told her she looked like her mother – not that those people cared to acknowledge who Marie Moser had become, or who she had married.

"You asked for me?" Alice asked politely. She glanced away to fix the cuff of her coat.

Her uncle pulled his timepiece from his breast pocket and eyed it. "You're going out?"

"Yes."

Alice gave no more information, and her uncle didn't ask for any. She supposed he must have some idea that she was doing something he'd disapprove of, but she never got caught and he must have known she wouldn't let him push much further than he already had, so he never intervened. As long as she kept singing, that was enough for him.

Her uncle cleared his throat and leaned back. "I'd like to discuss the performance at the Konzerthaus in two weeks. Pichler has written another song that I think we should debut at that performance. I'll have the sheet music ready for you this afternoon."

Alice stiffened. Pichler. She wondered whether he was actually working for the propaganda department now, or just sucking up still. She knew what songs from him would sound like. He had an ear for tune, certainly, but his heart belonged to the Nazis. Alice had already sung three songs for Herr Goebbel's department. She still heard them on the radio sometimes, stirring up national spirit and support for the war. Convincing the public to forgive the rationing of food. Convincing them to love Germany and all the Fatherland stood for.

Hearing her voice on the radio singing those songs felt strange. Alice still didn't understand how she'd sung the words so sweetly when they tasted like poison.

For your freedom, came her own steady voice. So you can help.

Alice swallowed. "I'll expect it this afternoon then."

Her uncle eyed her for a few moments, then nodded.

Alice turned on her heel and strode right past the waiting Julia, through the hallway, down the stairs, and out the front door of the house into the sunlight outside.

When the fresh breeze blew on her face, Alice closed her eyes and took a deep breath in. She never realized how stifling that house felt until she was out of it.

She opened her eyes and instantly the feeling crept back over her. Directly across the street a huge poster was pasted on the side of a building: it depicted a tall, proud eagle sat atop a set of golden laurels with the swastika prominently displayed. The poster read Rally of Peace. 1939. A red cross had been taped over it.

They'd cancelled that rally when the war broke out.

Alice cleared her throat and turned down the street. After a month of war, she could not say that life had changed so much. She still felt a creeping fear and the ominous sense that something huge was about to happen, but she'd felt that way for… well, it had been coming on for years now. Perhaps she'd been at war longer than she realized.

Mostly, the war was happening elsewhere. Japan was launching offensives on China. Warsaw had surrendered to Germany, and thus Poland joined the Third Reich (albeit more unwillingly than Austria had). Alice did not think they would get to have a plebiscite. Germany was now firing on the French Maginot line. The rest of Europe was doubling down, shoring up its defenses, no doubt very nervous. British troops had entered Belgium and France. The battle had begun in earnest at sea, with air attacks and a British battleship being sunk by a German U-boat in Scotland. Russia crept closer westward, though ostensibly they were still allies with Germany.

Every day something new seemed to happen, and Alice kept waiting for it. The thing that would change everything, turn everything back the way it had once been. Maybe if America stepped in. Or Russia changed alliances. But the world just… kept on keeping on. If Alice wanted to she could pretend that none of this was happening, that no one was in danger or disappearing in the night. It wasn't like the rationing affected her uncle's household.

Alice kept her hands in her pockets and her head high as she strode through Vienna's streets. She'd never walked this route before. She didn't make a habit of going the same way twice.

Vienna felt very different from New York. Both cities held a sense of history, but Vienna's history was the older kind, of kings and empires and the black plague and the catholic church. Where New York had pavement, Vienna had cobblestones. The cities had different spirits. Alice could sense them – Vienna was ancient, regal and refined while New York was the bustling, burning heart of youth. She loved them both.

Black cars drove past Alice as she made her way through the city, spewing fumes that made her nose wrinkle, and other pedestrians walked up and down the sidewalks between the tall, grand buildings on either side of the avenue. Occasionally they glanced at Alice as she passed and their eyes went wide with recognition.

Alice knew who they saw: Die Sirene, in her elegant clothes with her golden hair shining on top of her head: aloof and beautiful and talented. She let them believe that she was that person. It kept them distant from her.

Ten minutes later, when she spotted a familiar bakery at the other end of the street, she turned left into a narrower alleyway. The buildings weren't so grand here. One burnt-out shop still bore scarlet graffiti of stars-of-David and the word Jude.

Alice averted her eyes just like everyone else did. The side of her face prickled as she walked past it.

She approached a familiar black-painted door, let herself in with the key she hid amongst the keys for her uncle's house, then climbed up the narrow, dark stairs to the third landing. She knocked on door 302, though softly. They were trying not to let the neighbors know that anyone lived there.

Alice felt, rather than heard, the presence behind the peephole, and a moment later the door swung open to reveal Jilí. Alice smiled at her friend and felt a flutter of satisfaction when Jilí smiled back. She didn't always do that these days.

In appearance, Jilí was Alice's opposite in many ways. Where Alice's hair was so pale it looked almost white some days, Jilí's hair was ink black and thick (from her Romani grandmother and mother, Jilí often said). Dark brows arched over her deep brown eyes, and her expressive face was now open in a tired smile. Jilí stood a head shorter than Alice but had acres of rigid determination to make up for it. In Alice's mind Jilí was a presence – you could not ignore her when she was in the room.

Jilí tipped her head at Alice, asked "Are you coming in or not?" in English and then turned on her heel to stride back into the apartment. They spoke English to each other usually, since Jilí always wanted to learn.

Laughing under her breath, Alice followed her friend in.

Jilí's apartment stood in stark relief to Alice's uncle's house, and was poorer even than Alice's tenement flat in Brooklyn had been. There wasn't much to it aside from a cot in the corner, a sparse kitchen with a coal stove and kettle, a table, and floorboards. Jilí and Franz had moved here after Kristallnacht in an effort to go further unnoticed, and Alice had bought it when Jews were forbidden from owning property. Still, she didn't think of it as her apartment.

Alice shrugged off her coat, hung it on a nail in the wall, and ran her hands through her hair to brush away the October chill.

"I've got another letter for you, finally," Jilí called over her shoulder.

"Truly?" Alice rushed to the cluttered table and sure enough right in the center sat a thick letter addressed to Jilí from Lisbon, in Steve's elegant handwriting. Alice picked it up and pressed her fingers to the paper, breathing in the smell of ink. The Thomas Cook service gave her peace of mind but it took a lot longer than regular air mail had. She'd sent her last letter to Steve two and a half weeks ago. "Thank you, Jilí."

Alice turned to put the letter in her coat's inside pocket. She'd read it when she got home. "Have you heard anything from the Lehners?" she asked her friend's turned back. Jilí put a kettle on the stove.

"No," Jilí replied. "So either they got out or they were caught, but either way there is nothing more we can do for them."

Alice pressed her lips together and went to peek through the crack in the curtains over the window. "Hope's a funny thing," she murmured.

"You singers and your lofty notions," Jilí responded mock-chidingly. "Come and sit, stop fussing."

"I don't fuss," Alice said, but she came to sit at the simple wooden table across from Jilí. "How are you?"

"See? Fussing." Jilí pulled a pair of men's trousers from the pile of clothes on the table, a spool of thread, and started mending a tear in the seams. Her eyes didn't lift to Alice's. "I'm fine, as always. You don't need to ask every time."

"Yes I do." Alice took a moth-bitten child's shirt from the pile and selected a scrap of fabric to darn it with. The fabric didn't match, but it didn't matter. Alice almost smiled at the thought of what Matthias would say if he saw the tailoring she was doing now. Even in the heights of the Depression he'd made sure the quality of his work never wavered.

"How are you, then?" Jilí asked. Her eyes darted up from her work.

"Fine," Alice replied. Then: "I'll be performing a new patriotic song soon." Now it was her turn to avoid Jilí's dark gaze.

"You made your choice, Alice. I know you don't mean what those songs say-"

"But no one else knows that," Alice said, keeping her voice purposefully soft. Her fingers danced around the needle. "Am I not just as bad as the rest of them who shout the slogans and praise the Fatherland?"

"Do you think you are?" Jilí asked. The two of them sat in silence for a few moments, working across from each other at the table in the bare wooden room.

"I hope not," Alice murmured. "But surely what I really feel starts to matter less, the more public I am in my support."

"I don't care what you do in public," Jilí said, suddenly vehement. Alice looked up into her hard brown eyes. "It's what that work allows you to do here, and beyond, that counts."

Alice drew in a slow breath through her nose and nodded. "You're right."

"Usually."

A smile crept across Alice's lips. "Everyone's okay?"

"As of last night, yes. We'll need to run another food collection tonight though. How are your lot in Berlin and Hamburg doing?"

Alice nodded by way of reply. She and Jilí had spent most of their waking hours lately into protecting people; they kept an eye on about fifteen families in Vienna alone, and Alice had made more 'friends' in a couple of other cities. Friends she supported with food, money, and sometimes papers from her Viennese friend Alma, an artist turned counterfeiter. Alice had met them through the music club, or through Jilí and Franz's group of friends, or from meeting them on her walks through the city at night. Her circle of friends grew larger every week. There was always someone in need of help.

It was just like having a normal friendship group, except for all the illegal help she gave them and the fact that every few months, someone was arrested and deported.

Jilí cleared her throat. "I spoke with Clara Meier from the practice the other day. She said she's worried about some of the children who've gone through there." Alice looked up from her darning. "She says she's been dealing with patient forms with three red cross marks on them – each one from a different doctor."

Alice set down her work. She'd heard of this too. Secrets in Austria inevitably turned into open rumor. "The children disappear," she said. Jilí nodded.

Alice's stomach dropped. She had barely believed the rumor the first time she heard it. She'd overheard a gossipy conversation at the opera, hardly a reliable source, but if Jilí was getting this from a nurse… "Where are they going?" she breathed.

Jilí leveled a look at her.

Alice's lips pressed tight again. "We must find out more."

"How?"

"The usual ways. You ask around where you can. Ask Clara if she can find out more, maybe get us some names. I'll do some snooping on my end, there's always a few surgeons and administrators at my uncle's parties. I'll see about visiting a children's ward sometime as the Siren."

Jilí cast her another long look.

Alice's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"I just thought you'd tell me to be careful again. Play it slow, wait for information to come to me. That's normally your advice, no?"

Alice set down the newly-darned shirt and frowned at her friend. Jilí wasn't wrong. She and her 'friends' had been focusing mainly on protection – keeping people safe and fed, getting them out when things got too bad for them. But they moved in shadows, never put their name to anything. No one who was anyone even knew that Alice was friends with any 'unsavory person', let alone a Romani woman who'd married a Jew.

She picked up a new shirt. "Being careful goes without saying. But if what Clara says is true… we must see if we can do something. What if there's a child with two red crosses on their form? If we can warn just one person-"

"Alright, alright," Jilí said with a quelling gesture. She took up another piece of clothing, this time a greatcoat. These clothes were to go to the Koglers, who had been living with their neighbors since August. Alice and Jilí collected clothes and food from anyone who would give them, and often Alice stole from her uncle.

The kettle whistled and Jilí stood and went to the tiny kitchen to tend to it. "What about you?" she called over her shoulder. "Any news from your end?"

"Aside from the usual rubbish about the war and Hitler's glorious army," Alice sighed, "Yes, actually. We went to Belvedere Palace on the weekend and the generals there were talking about a new push against the Jews."

Jilí went still with the kettle still poised in her hand.

"Now that they have Poland they are saying that SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann has been put in charge of the Jewish Emigration office, and it's not going to be voluntary emigration anymore." Alice knew Adolf Eichmann, he'd been to a few of her performances back when he lived in Vienna. He'd been posted to Berlin now.

She continued: "They're going to just move quotas of people out of the Reich. No arrests or strong encouragement anymore, just deportation. I only heard concrete plans for Moravia and Poland, but it sounds like this is just the beginning of something larger." Alice had paid very, very careful attention to the floating conversations she'd passed through and taken part in that night, keeping her expression no more interested than if they had been discussing the theater. But now her face was as grave as stone.

Jilí finished pouring and slowly picked up the teacups. "Where will they send them?"

"East," Alice replied. "Poland. Further."

Jilí set a teacup in front of Alice. The steaming surface shivered. "I will warn everyone I see."

"As will I," Alice nodded. "I'll see if I can find out when this policy may come to Vienna. Maybe we could see about moving them to the forest or the countryside for a while."

"For how long?" Jilí asked wryly. "No, the best chance they have now is to go underground. Live in basements, attics, in shut-up houses. Their best chance is that the police think they have already left. They will only be more visible in the countryside."

"I'll pass it on." Alice sipped the tea, but all she tasted was ash. She'd started off providing food and blankets and warning people when the police might come knocking on doors. She did not know quite how it had evolved to this. She didn't know how to protect people from governments and nations. The problem had very suddenly gotten much larger than she knew what to do with. But she still felt a pull. As if there were some solution she hadn't found yet.

She ran a thumb down the side of her teacup. "What else can we do?"

Jilí took a sip of her tea and then looked into its brown depths. She did not reply.

Excerpt from article 'What Was Life Like for Jews in the Early Years of the War?' by Howard Muller (2002)

Historians are often divided on the topic of when, exactly, the Nazi party's plans for Jewish people evolved to extinction, but it is clear that the 'Holocaust' as we know it did not begin until early 1941. Jewish people were by no means safe, of course, in the wake of Kristallnacht and ever-more-violent retaliations against their people. After the annexation of Poland in 1939, the Jewish population there were forced into ghettos, governed by Jewish Councils and rife with disease and starvation.

Back in the Fatherlands, authorities began a Euthanasia Program against patients with mental illness and disabilities (in what many historians see as a precursor to the Holocaust), and Jews and other minorities faced increasingly drastic measures to force them out of the 'pure' Aryan neighborhoods. Many remained, whether out of lack of opportunity, fear of worse treatment elsewhere, or loyalty to their homes. They could not have known what was on its way.

Alice and Jilí talked about other things after that. It was too much to think only of the war day in, day out. Alice managed to make Jilí laugh. After a few hours Alice kissed her friend on the cheek, fetched her coat and walked quietly down the stairs again.

She took an entirely new route back home this time, cutting through the markets. She buried her hands in her pockets and tilted her head down so less people would recognize her. On her way back up her home street, a troop of soldiers in trucks drove past. A few of them shouted her way, and moments later their laughter faded along with the engine exhaust.

Alice felt very small as she let herself back into her uncle's house.

No one else was home, which made the stifling pressure inside the house dissipate. Alice went straight into her room, shrugged out of her coat after fetching Steve's letter, and went to her dresser.

She allowed herself a few moments to get one of her hidden jazz records and set it up on the phonograph. Then she pulled out one of her dressing table drawers, carefully took out the bottles of perfume, and eased the false bottom out of the drawer. The smells of paper and ink drifted into the air as Steve's old letters were revealed.

Alice set the new letter on the dresser and slit it open with her paperknife.

The moment she saw his words – Dear Alice – she smiled and leaned back against her chair. She had to force herself not to read too quickly; she only got the chance to read a letter of his for the first time once, and she wanted to savor it.

Steve told her about home. He told her about the end of the baseball season and the Dodger's hard luck, about Mrs Symanski at the post office and Bucky's latest outrageousness and about her brother. Tom wrote Alice letters with more frequency as his literacy got better, through the Thomas Cook office, but Alice liked hearing about him from Steve as well. Steve had started a new job, and his kitchen pipes were leaking. He sketched in the margins, as he always did: Bucky clinging to the side of the Brooklyn trolley with a wild gleam in his eyes, bagels in a shop window, a rough sketch of children playing in the street, a comedy doodle of himself battling his kitchen pipes like Hercules throttling some many-headed serpent. Alice wished she could illustrate her life for him as vividly as he did for her.

Alice finished the letter with an uncontrollable grin on her face. It had been over three years since she'd last seen Steve but the image of him in her mind had continued to grow – maybe not the physical image of him, but the way she perceived him. He'd grown even more serious with age, and letter-writing had brought out a more thoughtful side to him. It was as if through letter writing she was allowed access to the part of him that made art.

She wondered if he looked different.

Alice pulled a few sheets of paper and immediately began writing out her reply. The longer she took to write and send it, the longer it would be until she would get his next letter. She paused more often as she wrote now, though. She'd been telling Steve less and less about the hard parts of her life. She didn't tell him about the awful songs she sang, or the people she spent so long listening to at parties. She told him very little about her 'friends', or what she and Jilí got up to at night. She skimmed details. One side effect of this was that in writing to Steve, she was forced to reflect on the happier parts of her life: how she'd gotten Jilí to smile. How she'd started feeding jellied fish to the litter of kittens that had shown up in the street beside her house. How it felt to bring people to tears with her song.

Once, after a performance, Alice had planted a red kiss beside her name at the bottom of a letter. She'd regretted it as soon as she put it in the letterbox but it was too late by then.

Steve never mentioned it.

Alice skimmed through her latest visit with Jilí (though she chose to include the clothes-mending they'd been doing. She wanted to tell Steve how it had reminded her of Matthias), then sat back, let out a long breath and looked out the window. The light was fading. Her knee bounced.

After she'd been looking out the window who knew how long, she turned back to her letter.

I have this dream that my parents never moved to New York, she wrote in a more careful hand. That we stayed in Austria. I never went to Brooklyn Junior High, my little brother was never born, I never met you and Bucky. In that dream-world, this strange Nazi movement creeps over me like a tide and I succumb to it. I join the girls section of the Hitler Youth, I sing the songs and I weep with excitement when Hitler appears in Vienna. I see Jilí and Franz on the street, and I curl my lip at them.

Is that all it would take? For me to simply live in a different place at a different time? Would I become that person: a person like I see all around me. A person my uncle would love.

My other, stranger dreams are a relief after that one. I dream of velvety darkness, golden lights, and voices so sweet it's like I've gone to heaven.

Alice wrote a few more lines about useless things, then signed her name and folded the letter. She ran a hand over her eyes, covering herself in darkness for a moment.

When she opened her eyes again she noticed that the light filtering through the window had gone golden and dusky. She checked the clock on the wall and decided to take a nap. She had to sneak out again tonight to help Jilí organize the food collection, and to warn as many people as she could about the upcoming deportation order.

But first she slipped the letter for Steve into an envelope, wrote his address, then put that envelope in a larger one bound for Lisbon. She tucked that letter into her coat and hid Steve's in the false bottom of her drawer. She could never bring herself to throw them away.

Her crimes concealed, Alice crawled into bed fully clothed and closed her eyes.

Excerpt from translated article 'Das Geheimnis der Sirene [The Mystery of the Siren]' by Hans Schruben (1961)

Many artists and intellectuals fled Austria once war was declared in Europe, seeking safer shores in Britain or beyond, in the States. Certainly, it's possible that the Siren may have still had friends in America who could have helped her set up a new life. But the Siren did not leave. Perhaps, since she did not have family who would be put in danger by the outbreak of war, she did not feel the need to flee; her uncle, Josef Huber, was a titan in music industry, politics, and society, who had reason to celebrate Nazi domination rather than fear it.

Perhaps, in the outbreak of war, the Siren saw an opportunity.

Rather than inflict any more terrible google translate on you all, just assume that if the dialogue takes place in Austria, it's in German. I will let you know otherwise.

Thanks to the History Place's page on the Holocaust for the specific details that backed up my understanding of the early years of the war.

I am now rolling back to a weekly updating schedule, so Happy New Year and see you all again next weekend!