"I was drunk all lost life."

(514.7-516.2)  The reading for today is another one of those transition passages in which we seem to be moving from one major point (the wedding ball) to another (what might be a significant, if somewhat brief, monologue from Shaun).  A lot of the fun in today's passage is the back and forth between Shaun and the old man.  I'll mostly leave it to you to uncover that as you read for yourself.

The passage begins with HCE, after his moment of glory in which he encountered (and married) ALP, disappearing.  Like Christ, who harrowed hell after his crucifixion, HCE found himself in a "hellfire club" and spent "[t]hree days three times" in the "Vulcuum."  Since there was "no hay in Eccles's hostel" (Eccles Street, we remember, was home to Mr. Bloom in Ulysses), the old man wonders where HCE was.  "Name or redress him and we'll call it a night!" he says to Shaun.

Shaun's answer is typically vague:  ". i . . ' .  . o . . l . "  As McHugh notes, the blanks can be filled in here to produce "Finn's Hotel," which both calls to mind the place where Joyce's wife, Nora, was employed when the couple met and emphasizes HCE's status as a reincarnated version of Finn MacCool.  The old man asks, "You are sure it was not a shuler's shakeup or a plighter's palming or a winker's wake etcaetera etcaeterorum you were at?"  In other words, was Shaun present for a particular one of Vico's ages:  birth, marriage, death, or the ricorso/return to the beginning?  "Precisely," Shaun says.  He was present for all of them at once.

Shaun goes on to say that he heard nothing from Goodman Fox, the church sexton who was in a fight with Magraw in Saturday's passage.  Frustrated with Shaun's evasions, the old man urges Shaun to explain what else happened that night:

I want you, witness of this epic struggle, as yours so mine, to reconstruct for us, as briefly as you can, inexactly the same as a mind's eye view, how these funeral games, which have been poring over us through homer's kerryer pidgeons, massacreedoed as the holiname rally round took place.

"Sure I told you that afoul," Shaun replies.  "I was drunk all lost life."  He still doesn't want to answer -- either he's told the old man before, or he was so drunk that he forgot what happened.  Still, it appears that the old man's encouragement at the end of today's passage will prompt Shaun to give at least a partial account in tomorrow's reading to satisfy his questioner.