BOTNS :Sev's Dad

Alan Lewis · 18 Jun 2005, 05:19 · from 2005-June.txt.gz

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From: alanarc at frontiernet.net (Alan Lewis)
Date: Sat Jun 18 05:19:02 2005
Subject: (urth) BOTNS :Sev's Dad
References: <20050617180138.37438.qmail at web25709.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <002b01c573ff$e6398070$4f85d2d1@VALUED7B9600FA>

> Vote for who you think is Sev's Dad... supporting
> evidence welcome, especially genetic stuff!

Count me squarely in the Ouen camp.  Otherwise how to explain the following 
from Citadel:

[Sev]: "But you can read and write."

"A bit, sieur."  He looked embarrassed.  "I've asked people, various times, 
what writing said.  I don't forget much."

__________________________

"Do you know, Ouen, you look a bit like her [Dorcas]."

The fat innkeeper had been listening more or less openly.  Now he chuckled. 
"He looks more like you!"

I am afraid I turned to stare at him.

"No offense intended, sieur, but it's true.  He's a bit older, but when you 
were talking I saw both your faces from the side, and there isn't a patch of 
difference."

I studied Ouen again.  His hair and eyes were not dark like mine, but with 
that coloring aside, his face might almost have been my own.

"You said you never found a woman like Dorcas -- like that one in your 
locket.  Still, you found a woman, I think."

His eyes would not meet mine.  "Several, sieur."

"And fathered a child."

"No, sieur!"  He was startled.  "Never, sieur!"

"How interesting.  Were you ever in difficulties with the law?"

"Several times, sieur."

"It is well you keep your voice low, but it need not be so low as that.  A 
woman you loved -- or perhaps one who loved you -- a dark woman -- was taken 
once?"

"Once, sieur," he said.  "Yes, sieur.  Catherine was her name.  It's an 
old-fashioned name, they tell me.  There was trouble, as you say, sieur. 
She'd run off from some order of monials.  The law got her, and I never saw 
her again."

The inference is of course that she was pregnant at the time, unbeknownst to 
Ouen, and that she was sent to the Matachin Tower, which is one of the ways 
we're told they get apprentices.  One would guess the order to be the 
Pelerines, since that would be so appropriate.  The text leaves little doubt 
Severian is convinced Ouen is his father, and I am too.

Alan Lewis

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