For one thing, the five New York Dons were in the old Sicilian tradition, they were "men with a belly" meaning, figuratively, power and courage; and literally, physical flesh, as if the two went together, as indeed they seem to have done in Sicily.
Ten to fifteen years after we were shut up in the recitation room from elementary school to university, we finally came out with a belly full of meridians, but in fact we knew nothing about them.
