They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy Read Free Book Online Page A

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;