interestingly, my first reaction to your relation of that scene is that there is indeed some explanation. The nature of it may be hidden, but it exists. And Severian is just pretending to be ignorant of it.
For example, the guy may recognize him as an exultant, and hate him for that. Or he recognizes him for an executioner, whether he is in fuligin or not. Or the guy hates him because Thrax is a small, shitty town and Severian is a stranger.
Any of these is sufficient and tells us more about Severian than about the tales. Further, I'd guess that Wolfe is in fact reminding us to look for those explanations. Severian is basically saying "A certain type of coincidence does not occur in narratives," though it may very well occur on nature.
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:19:22 -0700
From: Robin Dunn <bigbadgerjohnny at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Urth Digest, Vol 56, Issue 58
To: urth at lists.urth.net
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Fascinating discussion of the moral parts the Neighbors play vis a vis human settlement on Blue--
One thought I had is that it can be counterproductive to some extent to expect that every creature we find in Wolfe fits into a detailed bestiary that he had planned.
Severian narrates at some point in Thrax that he rarely reads tales where strangers are encountered, no dialogue results, but some nameless hatred is still there between men. As I recall Severian has this thought when he passes some guy that glares at him, without any explanation.
Part of what I always liked about Wolfe is that he's willing to have so many loose ends, and he's willing to introduce incredibly complex ideas and characters almost as side-gags, before moving on to something completely different.
I guess what I'm saying is, sometimes the crazy shit goes down, and we stay in the dark ;)