Well, Severian's attitude to details is famously bad - he tends to include, interpret and omit things liberally. It's furthermore not too surprising that he mis-identified the old man some years later as he grew more shrunken and old since Severian's memory is provably faulty at times. Interestingly, he even mis-identifies himself on the funerary bronze in Shadow, and in his similarity to Ouen, which in Citadel was described as uncanny.
<br>The strongest evidence is still the man's clear reaction to the name of Malrubius. The old man from the lake would have a reason to expect someone to see a familiar face below water, but few others would. Nothing unfamiliar would have a name. Certainly not women speaking in strange tongues from the river.
<br>Finally, the stylistic argument would be that Severian seems to encounter the rest of his ancestors in these sorts of puzzles.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/19/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Tony Ellis</b>
<<a href="mailto:tonyellis69@btopenworld.com">tonyellis69@btopenworld.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Paul B wrote:<br>>I think it's nigh impossible for someone to infer from what Severian said to<br>>Roche that undines were involved unless they knew what actually happened<br>>down there.<br><br>I'm not saying the boatman infers that undines are involved. I don't
<br>imagine he knows what an undine is. But if he has previously heard a<br>woman's voice coming out of the water, or glimpsed something, then it<br>would explain why he immediately jumps to the conclusion that a woman
<br>is what Severian has seen.<br><br><br>>As for the old man, it's not clear what his current job is, but he sure is<br>>poor, and he does own a boat of sorts that would still require tar to keep<br>>afloat.
<br><br>You're still not very likely to get tar-stained clothes poling a<br>little boat around a lake. And in any case, no mention is made of<br>Dorcas's husband having tar-stained clothes. The fact that Severian<br>
notices the river boatman's clothes are tar-stained but makes no such<br>observation about the old man in the Gardens is another reason to<br>assume they are two different people.<br>_______________________________________________
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