and then a short while later when Bardellino’s son was about to flunk out the mother went to Aversa for a meeting with the assistant principal and she insinuated in a threatening manner that she was married to Ernesto Bardellino and that they had better not try to flunk her son the assistant principal basically told her to fuck herself it wasn’t an act of courage it wasn’t a challenge to the organization it was just that the assistant principal took a look at this Signora Bardellino and decided to treat her with contempt because all he could see was a woman of humble origins a peasant a farmer’s wife and one from a small town so he gave her no consideration he had no idea who he was dealing with and so he treated her as if he were swatting away an annoying fly and in fact whenever he enountered her afterward he was well aware of who he was dealing with he never behaved that way again but this time the son was flunked and nothing could be done about it and when the woman told her husband about her meeting Ernesto Bardellino replied that the assistant principal had done the right thing that is to say these people in certain situations appreciate a ruthless response and basically they can’t stand brown nosers

there are cases where I’m not saying that they respect the ideas of others but they might accept them provided those ideas do nothing to threaten their own interests because if instead of his son’s standing at school the issue was that someone was harming the clan or the clan’s economic interests there wouldn’t have been a second thought he would have ordered him killed that’s how it is here if you create a problem it’s not like the first time they beat you up or they murder you first they make it clear that it would be a good idea to cut it out the second time they beat you bloody and the third time well you’d just better get very far away very quickly they refuse to accept acts of disrespect once there was a guy who ran errands he’d drive their children around wherever they needed to go that sort of thing and this guy without ever saying a word about it to the boss he bought thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff he bought a moped for his son he bought clothing for his family and he never paid a cent he just put it on the tab letting the businesses assume it was for the boss and then one day he bought a car supposedly for the boss as well and one day it happened that Bardellino was walking by and the auto dealer asked him so did you like the car and that’s how Bardellino found out all about it and when he ran into this guy in the street he beat him bloody with his fists he destroyed him the guy was covered with blood and that guy still thanks Bardellino for letting him off so lightly