"It is looking pretty black against you"

(186.19-188.7)  The police officer we met at the end of yesterday's passage is now identified as Petty constable Sistersen.  The narrator explains that Sistersen was sent to save Shem "from the ligatureliablous effects of foul clay in little clots and mobmauling on looks."  He encountered Shem "reeling more to the right than he lurched to the left, on his way from a protoprostitute."  Upon Shem's addressing Sistersen, it became pretty clear that Shem was pretty drunk, and the narrator accordingly notes that Sistersen "was literally astundished over the painful sake, how he burstteself, which he was gone to."

Perhaps reflecting Shem's drunken, low state, the language on the first half of page 187 gets looser and makes less and less sense as one progresses through it.  Eventually, the narrator gives up:  "We cannot, in mercy or justice nor on the lovom for labaryntos, stay here for the residence of our existings, discussing Tamstar Ham of Tenman's thirst."  In other words, we can't sit here for the rest of our lives talking about Shem.

This leads immediately into a dialogue, in which Sistersen -- now called "Justius" (after the "mercy or justice" in the preceding sentence) -- first addresses Shem, now called (in a stage direction), "himother."  The juxtaposition of the law-upholding Sistersen/Justius and the law-flaunting Shem provides us with a pretty big clue that Sistersen/Justius is a form of Shaun, and this clue is confirmed when we learn that Justius is addressing "himother," or his other twin, Shem.

Justius begins the dialogue by boasting of his "brawn."  "I'm the boy to bruise and braise," he says.  He then addresses Shem directly, saying, "Stand forth, nayman of Noland."  (The pitting of Justius/Brawn vs. Shem/Noland recalls Giordano Bruno and indicates that Shaun and Shem are both Bruno of Nolan and thus confirm Bruno's theory of a whole embracing diametrically opposed opposites.)  After this direct address, we get a parenthetical that I think sheds some light on this chapter:

(for no longer will I follow you obliquelike through the inspired form of the third person singular and the moods and hesitensies of the deponent but address myself to you, with the empirative of my vendettative, provocative and out direct)

Justius says that he will now move from addressing Shaun in the third person to addressing him in the second person.  This is interesting, because it's actually the first time Justius has addressed Shem.  I think this statement indicates that Justius not only is a form of Shaun, but also is a form of the narrator in this chapter.  The narrator in this chapter has consistently referred to Shem in the third person, which would explain why Justius notes the shift in the parenthetical.  If Shaun is actually the chapter's narrator, it explains the particularly harsh tone toward Shem (beyond Joyce playfully denigrating the figure most clearly aligned with Joyce in the Wake) throughout the chapter.

Justius goes on to say, "Shem Macadamson [son of Adam, the first man, and another version of HCE], you know me and I know you and all your shemeries."  Justius then calls upon Shem to make his confession, noting that "[i]t is looking pretty black against you."  In a reference to the restorative powers of their mother, ALP, who is represented by the River Liffey, Justius says, "You will need all the elements in the river to clean you over it all."  It will be interesting to see what becomes of this latest clash between brothers.