Balint was pleased and surprised to discover that Laszlo would be at Siklod. It would be good to see again his only real friend from childhood, from their days together at school and afterwards, before Laszlo had moved to Budapest for his two years at the university. From that time they had not seen each other often. A few times they had been invited at the same time by Laszlo’s aunts for partridge or pheasant shoots in Hungary and, sometimes, by chance, they had seen each other in Transylvania. But their bonds of friendship, the stronger for reaching back to their adolescence, had never weakened. It was these, rather than their blood relationship, that were close, since Laszlo’s grandmother had been old Peter Abady’s sister, which bound them together. There were other ties too, deep and unconscious, similar traits of character and the fact that they were both orphans; for though Balint still had a mother and a home to return to in the summer holidays, Laszlo had lost both his parents when he was only three. His mother, beautiful and talented, a painter and sculptress, bolted with another man, and shortly afterwards Count Gyeroffy was found dead in his woods, shot by his own gun. It was put out that there had been an accident. The family would accept no other explanation, but this vague and uncertain story had cast a dark cloud over young Laszlo’s childhood. As he no longer had a home he had been taken by his grandmother, but she in turn died after only a few years and, since then, his school holidays would be spent with his aunts. Until he came of age he would have no home of his own and so he was always a guest, sometimes with cousins in Transylvania, but more often in west Hungary, in Budapest, where his older aunt was married to Prince Kollonich and the younger to Count Antal Szent-Gyorgyi.
Balint leant out of the fiacre to look at the rapidly disappearing chaise. Through the billowing clouds of dust he could just make out the figure of Laszlo waving to him. He waved back, but dust from another passing car soon removed him from sight.
Two men sat in a half-covered victoria. On the right was old Sandor Kendy, who had two nicknames in Transylvania. To his face they called him ‘Vajda’, after his notorious ancestor, a wilful and violent-tempered nobleman whose misdeeds and arrogance had finally brought him to the scaffold. Behind his back they called him ‘Crookface’, not out of malice but because whenever he spoke or smiled — which happened seldom — his mouth pulled to one side. An old sabre scar, by no means concealed by a luxuriant moustache, made his expression seem even more ferocious.
Nearly all the Kendys had nicknames, which were needed to distinguish those with the same first name. Apart from Crookface there were two other Sandors: ‘Frantic’, so-named for his restless, changeable character; and ‘Zindi’, called after a now-forgotten bandit whom he was thought to resemble.
Next to Crookface in the open two-wheeler sat Ambrus Kendy, ten years younger who, though only a distant cousin, had a marked resemblance to the older man. So it was with all the Kendys. Prolific as the family was, they could be instantly recognized for the family looks, even in the most distant of cousins, had survived generations of separation from the main branch of the family. They were dark, with light eyes and thick bushy eyebrows. All had aggressive belligerent noses, noses like sharp beaks; eagle beaks like Crookface, falcon beaks like Ambrus; all the birds of prey were represented, from buzzards and peregrines down to shrikes. The proof of the enduring hereditary force was this; the family being so numerous, their estates had become smaller and smaller through division between so many heirs; good marriages had to be made, marriages where the dowry was more important than the bride; but no matter what ugly or feeble women they wed — crooked, lame, fat, thin, bulbous or pug-nosed — the Kendy looks endured and they bred handsome boys and pretty girls all with the same aquiline noses, dark hair and light eyes. People said this strength stemmed from heavy pruning. Through the centuries so many wayward Kendys had perished on the battlefield or the scaffold that those who were left sprouted so much the stronger.
Crookface and Ambrus were alike in more than looks. Both were coarse-spoken, irritable, and contrary, given to reply with a single obscene expletive. This was an innovation started by Crookface in Transylvania, where none of his family, even in boundless fury, to which they were much given, had ever been known to use bad language. But though the coarseness of these two Kendys was the same, it was expressed in different ways. Crookface was sombre and stern and was rude in such a commanding way that few ventured to answer back. Ambrus imitated the rough rudeness of his cousin, but he transformed it to his own advantage. When obscenities fell from his mouth they did so, not aggressively like Crookface, but with a sort of natural jolly roughness, as if he couldn’t help it, as if it were merely uncouth honesty. It was as if he were saying, ‘Of course I am foul-mouthed, but I was born that way, coarse and rough maybe, but sincere, straight and true.’ And this impression of honest good-fellowship was heightened by the kindly look in his light-blue eyes, his deep rumbling voice, his heavy stamping tread and the smile that never left his face. Everyone liked this robust, attractive man and many women loved him. When Balint Abady had come to the university of Kolozsvar at the end of the nineties he found that all the students admired ‘Uncle’ Ambrus and made him their model, everyone imitated him, letting it be known that real men all spoke as he did, using foul language with zest, and that only affected weaklings spoke politely. Ambrus was the students’ leader in other ways too. Though married and the father of seven children, he was a great rake and loved drinking and carousing late into the night. He had a strong head, and when he came to Kolozsvar — which was often and always for long visits — there were revelries every night; with heavy drinking and wild gypsy music. The young students loved it and copied him slavishly.
Balint remembered vividly how he too had followed the fashion, entering into the excesses that always started as soon as Uncle Ambrus appeared. Though it was not really to their taste, he and Laszlo had been swept along by the tide. Perhaps he would not have been tempted if he had been older. Perhaps he would have resisted had he not come straight from the seclusion of boarding school. But as it was he did not resist, and neither did Laszlo. Both felt the need to belong, for, in spite of being related to many of their fellow students, they were treated as outsiders, newcomers, to whom few of the others really took, or confided in, as they did among those with whom they had grown up. Nothing of this reserve, this withholding of comradeship, this intangible dislike, showed upon the surface. There was nothing that Balint or Laszlo could get hold of, nothing for which they could seek an explanation; but it was there nevertheless, in the thousand daily trivialities of casual encounter.
Against Laszlo this antagonism, though it never entirely disappeared, soon subsided when they discovered how well he could play the violin. It was a great advantage to be able to stand in for the band-leader and lead the revels with intoxicating gypsy music. And he could also play the oboe, and clarinet and piano. But the latent hostility to Balint did not change. Maybe it was because he never drank himself under the table, never really let himself go. No matter how much he drank, he always knew what he was doing and what everyone else was doing too. It was as if he could never rid himself of that inner critic, ever alert and ironical, who would watch how he would dance in his shirt-sleeves in front of the gypsies and sing and lark about like the others, and who would say to him, ‘You are a hypocrite, my boy. Why play the fool?’ Still, always hoping that he would get closer to the others, always deluding himself that they would accept him as one of themselves and forget his ‘foreign’ background, he would throw himself into their drinking parties, shout and break things and try to do everything they did. But that inner voice was never silenced. Even so Balint persevered, trying to merge himself with these companions who despised anyone who didn’t get drunk, who didn’t go wild at the sound of gypsy music, who didn’t know the words of every song, and who didn’t have his own tune, at the sound of which one was expected to jump on the table, fall on the floor and break, if not all the furniture, at least a few glasses. Uncle Ambrus did all these things, so everyone else must follow suit; and it was considered a real proof of good fellowship if, towards dawn, one sat crying in the band-leader’s lap or kissed the cellist. Much of this was the natural rivalry of young male animals. They had to surpass each other, to show themselves the better man; and one exploit would lead to another, each more exaggerated than the last.