Fake ID (7 page)

This was. There were no other kids at Gran's funeral, but I must have been worrying about other people from her history that I didn't know, and the boy had sort of appeared in my dreams.

That's what Luke said when I told him at breakfast, anyway.

‘Dogs don't speak Hungarian or write cyber wills on the Internet. You're making up stuff in your head because you haven't got real answers. Ask your mum about the boy next time she rings. Or you'd be better off checking the Red Cross International queries on the Internet,' said Luke. He was like that.

So I could watch Fortuna arrive, I went up the steps to Studio 17 in Main Street at 3.50 p.m.

School had been yuk today. In Mr Grant's class they were still writing up interviews with ‘oldest family members'. Unless I asked Mum, how could I do mine? But I did ask the science teacher about DNA. Turns out you need a body. Or at least body samples.

‘What sort of samples?' I'd asked Mr Noel.

‘Medical biopsies taken for hospital tests last up to fifteen years.'

‘Do they take samples in Intensive Care?'

Mr Noel looked at me a bit strangely. ‘Possibly. They'd be called path. samples. Biopsies. Luke is doing frogs for his assignment. Are you thinking of studying DNA as your science topic for this assignment, Zoe?'

‘Er…Yes.' I'd forgotten about that science assignment. Too busy with family history.

In the past, Gran always helped me with school work. But when I started asking questions for my history assignment about when and why she came to Australia in 1956, she kept changing the subject to my hockey training, or ‘Let's open some Tim Tams.'

Mr Grant had said to copy documents like birth and marriage certificates or passports, so I asked Gran for hers. She didn't want to let me photocopy them. I thought it was because she didn't want to let them out of her sight. But it was more than that. I knew a bit about passports because Mum got a new one when she went to Antarctica, even though she was working in an Australian territory and didn't need a passport for there.

‘In a polar emergency, I might be taken out to South America or even the Falklands, and then I'd need a passport to move in and out of countries,' Mum explained. ‘And my old passport had a very unflattering photo.'

That bit was true. Mum's nose stuck out in the old photo. Just like Gran's and mine, although Gran didn't worry how she looked. She just worried about her history.

I remember the thoughtful way Gran looked when she poured the mousse mixture into bowls and said,‘ Everyone has secrets in their past. If we tell them, they are no longer secrets. And maybe others will be hurt. Have a taste of this.' She gave me the spoon to lick.

‘What sort of secrets?' I licked the spoon and the mousse tasted wonderful. ‘Secret recipes? Cooking secrets?'

Gran shook her head with a smile. 'Nothing as simple as that. I have a political secret. Something, which you would find hard to understand in today's Australia. Fear can make you do unusual things.'

Gran put the mousse bowls into the refrigerator.

‘What sort of fear?' I was beginning to sound like one of those pushy TV interviewers that shove a mike up your nose for the thirty-second grab on the 6 p.m. news.

Gran ignored my question. ‘Switch on the music. Try this on.' That's when she let me try on her new dancing outfit: the red veil, baggy pants and even the gold coin belt which fits on the hips and clanks when you walk. That's when the vivid colours and sounds started to interest me as ‘dress-ups'. I loved the feel of the silky material as I moved.

‘Play with colour and music. Be someone else for a few minutes.'

I remember saying, ‘When you get as old as you Gran, do you still like dressing up?'

‘Of course. Inside, I feel only your age.'

Maybe, but outside, she looked old, with lots of wrinkles around her neck. At least the veil covered her wrinkly tummy. Playing the music at full volume, we had fun that afternoon. And we ate all the Tim Tams.

Only after, I realised I didn't see the certificates or the passport. Gran was excellent at changing the subject. This time she had distracted me with food and dancing. In class, Mr Grant said towns had been destroyed or over-run during wartime and records lost, especially if the town hall had been bombed. Missing documents made it hard to prove who you were. Maybe it worked both ways? You could claim to be someone like Magda from a town where no records were left.

So here I was now, meeting the mysterious Fortuna at Studio 17, the fancy name for the belly-dancing place. I felt in my backpack for Gran's red dancing outfit, which was a link to my fun past, when Gran and I mucked around instead of doing homework. I also had my hockey gear for later.

Ground level, the shop looked seedy. A worn red carpet covered the stairs to the first-floor dance room. A crystal ball hung from the ceiling, its movements reflecting lights and creating another world. Music wailed. Mirror walls reflected the dancers, suggesting more than the real number that were there.

Behind a sign on a card table, marked:
Clara the clairvoyant — fortunes told
, sat a woman wearing rainbow scarves. Because I'd been thinking about the name Fortuna, I paused.

‘What's the time?' Clara asked. I glanced at my watch.

‘Three minutes to four,' I said. Surely a clairvoyant should have known that! If they can tell the future, they should at least know the time.

The drum beat got faster. A belly dancer was performing under the crystal light. Necklaces and bracelets clinked as she moved gracefully in her pink, see-through harem pants. Arms moved like snakes.

Clapping and swaying to the beat, a woman about Gran's age, in t-shirt, trackie pants, and bare feet looked as out of place as I was in my Hedge High school uniform. (Mum always bought me the full uniform so I wouldn't feel out of place in a new school. Some chance.) Didn't look like Fortuna was here yet, but maybe I could find out stuff.

‘Excuse me. My gran took belly-dancing classes here,' I said. ‘Her name was Magda. Did you know her?'

Behind, the mirror-wall reflections multiplied the dancers as the old woman looked at me intently through her see-over glasses.

‘Does she have a different dancing name? Most do, you know. Was she a gypsy? A traveller? Gypsies tell fortunes, or they used to, before all these new taxes. Part of the cash economy they used to be. Now we all have to fill in forms.'

‘Zaria was her dancing name, I think. There was a message to be here at 4 p.m. to meet Fortuna.' This was really stupid. I should never have come.

‘Here, I'm Fortuna. Why isn't Zaria here tonight?'

There was no simple way to say it. I started. ‘She's, er …dead. It was her funeral yesterday.'

Fortuna staggered and I grabbed her arm. She looked
really
old, all of a sudden. ‘If she's not coming, I'd better go,' said Fortuna hurriedly.

I held her arm. ‘Wait. I need to know things…about my gran. About Madga… And if Fortuna's really your name, I've got something for you, from her.'

‘What?' Fortuna said suspiciously. Above us, the swaying crystal ball picked up the lights. This was seriously unreal stuff. Like being inside a cyber-game. This would freak Luke more than the funeral chapel music.

‘Postcards with your name on the outside.' I dragged them out of my backpack.

Fortuna ran her fingers around the card edges gently. ‘She kept them! I remember sending these. Your grandmother and I grew up together in the same village. We went to university together. But I lost touch with her once she left for Australia.'

‘Was she called Magda when you were girls?' Fortuna knew answers I needed.

Fortuna shook her head. ‘Dagmar Kiss was her name. But many things change, including names.'

Looking across at the fortune-telling stall, I asked, ‘Did you use the name Fortuna here because it was something to do with telling fortunes?' A guess, and this time I was right.

Fortuna laughed. ‘Good fortune. I saw the signs the first time I came here. As village girls, we loved to dance. And this was the next-best thing. I met your grandmother here, by accident, a couple of years ago. Her face went white when I cried out, ‘Dagmar!' She had a different life now, so we agreed to use just our dancing names here. I was Fortuna and she was Zaria. We ‘played' and relaxed here, dancing for ourselves, not others. Belly-dancing is the new yoga. Probably the two oldest belly-dancers they've ever had. I'm sorry that your grandmother has died. She was a very unusual and brave woman.'

‘What did she do that was brave? I need to know for my family history assignment.' How much of Gran was in me? Would I ever do anything considered brave?

‘She acted on her political beliefs.' Fortuna's eyes filled with tears. ‘Even when it was hard for her because those close to her disagreed.'

‘Why did you call on her answer-phone?' I asked.

From her neat bag, Fortuna pulled an envelope. ‘This letter arrived. I promised to keep quiet about her past while she was alive. But now Sandor Kovacs has been tracking his parents. He wrote to everyone from the village where I grew up. I never knew him. But I knew his mother when she was a girl.'

‘The real Magda?' I asked. ‘Not the fake?'

Fortuna nodded.

‘Towards the end of the Revolution, your grandmother decided to leave for Australia. But she couldn't use her own name to cross the border. Her real name might have been on a wanted list. So she ‘borrowed' the name of a girl from our village, Magda Konya, who had married and separated from the athlete Janos Kovacs. He stayed in Melbourne, after the Olympic Games.'

‘What happened to the real Magda?' I asked fearfully. The Olympics clue sounded right, especially after Pa's sporting stories.

‘Vanished later.' Fortuna looked closely into my eyes. ‘Are you afraid of learning too much about your grandmother?'

I nodded nervously. This was out of my control and I was freaking out but trying not to show it. Was I going to discover that my gran had done something really bad? ‘Did my gran have anything to do with the disappearance of Magda Number One?'

I couldn't believe this was happening. I was asking a woman I'd just met if my grandmother had killed or ‘got rid of' someone. Did Fortuna realise what I was doing? Why should she tell me the truth?

Fortuna shrugged. ‘Who knows? Probably not. She just used her name and papers because Magda Number One didn't want to leave the country and Dagmar did. During the Revolution, people changed sides. It was a different world from here. Things, which matter here, now, did not matter then. Your grandmother was working with Tibor, until they were arrested, and she escaped, but had to leave the country. In wartime, you make fast decisions. You go or stay. One way you die, the other you live. Life is very precious. Magda Number One had a son and was separated from her husband.' Fortuna shrugged. ‘Maybe they agreed. Or perhaps Dagmar just took the documents. Once she was here, Janos and the new Magda stayed together. Everything official was in that name. Last night's TV news mentioned Hungarian political files being opened. Some informers' names have been released. Your grandmother's name as editor could be among them.'

‘Which name?' I was getting so confused. Was my gran an informer? That sounded really bad. Much worse than just telling on someone, or white lies or even cheating.

But maybe it also meant speaking out when others kept quiet. I hoped so.

‘In Hungary, at that time, your gran was known as Dagmar Kiss. Here, she was known as Magda Kovacs, or as Zaria when she danced.'

‘So as Dagmar there, no one would link her with the Madga here?' That was a relief. If she had done something really bad, it was another life away from here. And people could change. Couldn't they?

I wished Luke were here. He'd say what he really thought. But I couldn't imagine him amongst the veils and jewellery which he'd think was ‘girly stuff'.

Behind us the dancer was still moving to the music and the light was revolving overhead.

As a distraction, I fingered the bracelets on the stall. Like toys. Bells jingled. Red and yellow jewels decorated the dangling neckpieces and bracelets. I held the snake bracelet against my bitten nails. It twined around the cuff of my uniform.

‘Push your sleeve up. Try it against your bare skin,' suggested Fortuna. ‘Your grandmother loved this kind of jewellery. It was a kind of play, like dancing with the veil or moving to the drums.'

Hesitantly, I pushed back my school uniform sleeve. The bracelet looked great. I loved the feel of it, smooth and cool.

‘Pa loved Gran, and she loved him. That was real.' That was true. Then I remembered what Mrs Donna had said about Pa's will. Why then had Gran decided to have those family photos mocked up? It was like having an alternative version. A choose-your-own-ending. The back-up family album. Who had she been going to give them to? Sandor for his past, or me for my assignment and my future?

‘Gran started to explain things to me, but then it stopped.' I told about Gran's finalthoughts.com message being lost in cyber-space.

‘Computers! Ah. Even the Internet. So! Magda would always try new things, even when we were young girls together.' Fortuna smiled and her eyes sparkled. ‘Swimming in the river with no clothes, dressing up, climbing out at night, and then we would follow. And she would ask questions. Even awkward questions that others would not ask. That's what got her into trouble later when she was a student journalist. And she was brave.' Fortuna nodded. ‘When things went wrong, she just kept trying. It was not her fault that the war interrupted her life.'

If some people thought Gran was brave and others thought she wasn't, who did I believe? Was all family history just stories you were told? Luke's mum and dad had their stories too.