I told you Evarist Bartolo is a snake in the grass

I’ve been saying it for years. But every time I open my mouth among friends to say what a scoundrel and a snake Evarist Bartolo is, and how I don’t trust him because he always seems to be lurking, hissing, in tall grass, somebody or other who you would think knows better leaps in conversationally to say: “But he’s so nice and understanding. And he is in favour of English/listens/knows what we mean/is one of us/basically decent/against corruption.”

Yeah, right. That being in favour of English is a really big thing. Well, he could hardly be otherwise, could he, given his wife. I’m quite sure he wouldn’t be in favour of English if it weren’t for the fact that she couldn’t speak any other language.

I’ve always stuck to my guns about that Bartolo because it’s transparently obvious to me that he’s got a nasty, resentful and extremely spiteful character, and that he particularly resents and despises the class of people into whom he married. He hangs about despising and resenting them, and working out how to do them in. Silently. Underhandedly. He hates all those Sliema types in the Baader Meinhof/Brigate Rosse spirit of his golden years, and that’s exactly why he gets a kick out of seeing them take him in and fawn all over him.

Of course he listens. He listens to work out the weaknesses, personality flaws and Achilles heel of the person he’s listening to, but meanwhile he’s thinking “I despise you. I would stick the knife in if I could. I hate society and the world. I especially hate people like you.”

That’s the impression I have always had of him: the one you can’t trust, sitting silently there on the sofa in the corner, never saying anything much but observing everything and picking up information for later use in terms of betrayal or sticking the knife in.

No wonder that sociopathic drunk, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, is one of his best friends. No decent person would have a friend like that.

And now we find out that he’s corrupt like the rest of them, putting his dirty, bribe-taking henchmen on the payroll, and creating job contracts for them that did not exist before.