(urth) Chris's last name

[Matthew Groves]

I have not been able to determine Chris's last name either.  We are
told that it is long and difficult, and hard to pronounce, and that a
signalman would abbreviate it.  Then we are told that Fr. Chris finds
a short bio of "Capt. Cos or Kruss, believed to have been Dutch or
German," and that he believes he is "Capt. Cos".  However he did not
make the connection to himself until he red that Cos made his wife his
chief lieutenant.

It is possible to infer from this that Capt. Chris's last name might
have been abbreviated "Cos" or "Krus" by a signalman; however, in that
case it seems to me that Fr. Chris would have been familiar with that
abbreviation, and hence would not have needed the detail about his
wife being chief lieutenant to connect the bio to himself.  Why Chris
would have been mistaken for Dutch or German is a mystery to me, since
he told Capt. Burt he was from Jersey (tee-hee), and told someone else
he was Italian, or rather Sicilian.

We have every reason to assume Chris's name is Sicilian.  He's from
New Jersey -- maybe from Newark since he renames a ship "New Ark"
(tee-hee again).  On the chance that he might be from a real-life
Newark mafia family, I looked on Wikipedia and found that the big
family there is the DeCavalcante crime family.  That's pretty long,
but not too difficult to spell and not at all difficult to pronounce.
(It's also not at all apt to be abbreviated "Cos" or "Krus".)

All of which is just to say: I don't know.

But while we're talking about Pirate Freedom, I just want to say that
I loved it beyond words.  I think Fr. Chris has more evil in his heart
than Severian the torturer ever had.  I look forward to the
discussions to help me unravel this Turk's head knot of a novel.

Matt G.