Word: madmanned
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...died in bed. The young Nicky was fond of uniforms and noisy parades, generous with sapphire bracelets for a ballerina in St. Petersburg. There was nothing to warn him of the gruesome shape of things to come but a swipe on the scalp by a sword-swinging Japanese madman at the end of a leisurely grand tour. Alicky was Princess Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt, favorite granddaughter of Queen Victoria-the matchmaking old matriarch of half the reigning families of Europe...
...theme is simple: a tough, heroic young revolutionary is transmogrified by power-and the fear of losing it-into a ruthless madman who rules his country with whims of hurricane force. After his death, his career is recalled by Frank, a government photographer and an old friend from the underground days, who now records the despot's lying in state. Frank's secret hobby is building up a huge collection of candid but forbidden photographs: "unsuitable pictures taken from unsuitable angles, the averted face of the world in which [the tyrant] moved, a parade of folly, a riot...
...person rich Hindus hire to lie in their beds at home while they go on holiday so the bedbugs will have somebody to bite. Joe's a terrific liar, so you never know when he's kidding around. I mean he's a madman. Joe's always horsing around doing things like converting to Mohammedanism at the lousy military school up in the goddam mountains so he can sleep with his Muslim classmate's sister, who he's never even seen, for God's sake. I mean Joe's really alienated...
...poison in a ring. March, madman, cross...
When he is not laughing, he is puzzling over the difference between what he is told and what he painfully finds out about the way things really are. As set down with disarming simplicity by Romero, Pito's story is "the dialogue between a poet and a madman." His travels with what he calls his "prodigious flute," a pipe whittled from bamboo, lead him all through the state of Michoacan and always take him back to the village of Santa Clara del Cobre, his bitterly loved and hated birthplace...