"What cant be coded can be decorded"

(482.9-484.10)  In their Skeleton Key, Campbell and Robinson explain that today's reading sees the inquiry of the four old men transitioning from the subject of HCE to the subject of his twin sons, Shaun and Shem.  The passage begins with a voice berating John, who had spoken at the end of yesterday's reading.  McHugh doesn't note who is doing this berating, but it seems to me that it is Shaun because the speaker says that he "would go near identifying you from your stavrotides," and it wouldn't make sense that one of the other three old men would need to identify John at this stage in the game.  Shaun, then, sort of heckles John, telling this least verbose (to this point) of the four to "pull your weight!"

McHugh identifies the next speaker as Matthew.  He asks Shaun whether he knows a young man by the name of Kevin who found ALP's letter after it was uncovered by the hen in the dump.  Shaun is evasive regarding Kevin.  He doesn't quite let on that he is actually Kevin, but instead says that this "sinted sageness" would sometimes be silent and focused inwardly, as if in prayer.  He ends his reply by getting defensive toward Matthew, telling him, "I no way need you."

Mark is the next speaker, according to McHugh.  He suggests that the person who discovered the letter will prove to be a great literary mind:  "The prouts who will invent a writing there ultimately is the poeta, still more learned, who discovered the raiding there originally."  That letter, like the Book of Kells and Finnegans Wake, can be decoded by people who approach it in the proper frame of mind:  "What can't be coded can be decorded if an ear aye sieze what no eye ere grieved for."  With both the letter and the Wake, he explains, "we have occasioning cause causing effects and affects occasionally recausing altereffects."  He then takes the inquiry a step further and suggests that they "twist the penman's tale posterwise."  Speaking of the letter, he says, "The gist is the gist of Shaum but the hand is the hand of Sameas."  In other words, the letter appears to have been written by Shem, meaning that Shaun has been falsely taking credit for it.  "There is a strong suspicion on counterfeit Kevin and we all remember ye in childhood's reverye," he says.  After recounting Kevin/Shaun's ostentatious youthful displays of virtue, Mark ultimately asks, Shaun whether he shares suspicions about Kevin's tale:  "Now, have you reasonable hesitancy in your mind about him after fourpriest redmass or are you in your post?"

This puts Shaun on the defensive and prompts an almost two page-long response that carries into tomorrow's reading.  He insults Mark and asks what Shem has to do with him.  He's not his brother's keeper.  What's more, he's upset that Mark, his "sexth best friend," once was delighted to support Shaun but now seems bent on defaming him.  

More to come from Shaun tomorrow . . . .