"This battering babel"

(62.26-64.21)  Alright, I'm back in business after another weekend away from the Wake.  It's looking more and more like I'm not going to be able to maintain the two-page a day pace over the course of the year, but as I've mentioned before, there's some wiggle room built into the plan since the book's 628 pages long, meaning there's roughly 314 daily readings.  So, I'll continue to soldier on as best I can . . .

Fortunately today's reading begins at a good spot to pick up at following the short hiatus.  The section today details two new accounts of the encounter between HCE and the Cad.  The first account picks up on/at "Wednesdbury" (nice job of Joyce there giving a place and time with one word).  HCE, "that one tall man, humping a suspicious parcel," is coming home late at night amid a "dense particular" (a shout-out to Dickens' "London particular" fog in Bleak House) from a minstrel show, when from out of nowhere an "unknowable assailant" points a "barkiss revolver" (a shout-out to Dickens' Mr. Barkis in David Copperfield -- I particularly like this reference, because Mr. Barkis is great) in HCE's face and says "you're shot, major."  The dispute apparently arises out of some jealousy involving either or both of two women, Lotta Crabtree and Pomona Evlyn.  The waylayer says he's got a knife and another gun, "a loaded Hobson's," and he must choose between "twin alternatives":  either shoot/rape the aunt (ALP?) or "bash in Patch's [HCE, I'm guessing] blank face beyond recognition."  The assailant then asks the assailed what he's doing with "that Kane's fender," to which HCE responds that this is a question for the assailant "to sultry well go and find out if he was showery well able."

But wait:  the narrator interrupts the story, saying, "But how transparingly nontrue, gentlewriter!"  So this is just another wild rumor.  We now get the second account.  The incident occurred either because of a dispute involving "Myramy Huey or Colores Archer, under Flaggy Bridge" or because of the Cad's apparent desire to draw the local law enforcement's attention outside of HCE's pub, "Haveyou-caught-emerod's temperance gateway."

This latest account continues by describing the state of the Cad when he's found outside of HCE's pub.  To put it simply, he's trashed.  He spent the day paying visits to an impressive list of local pubs:  "House of Blazes, the Parrot in Hell, the Orange Tree, the Glibt, the Sun, the Holy Lamb and, lapse not leashed, in Ramitdown's ship hotel."  The Cad drunkenly explains that he's a process server and was trying to open up a bottle of stout by banging it against the pub's door.  The noise attracted Maurice Behan (identified in my secondary sources as a pub employee), who was awoken by the Cad's pounding and rushed outside to see what was going on.  The ruckus also caused HCE's daughter, "the young reine" (French for "queen," and, I speculate, a young Rhine River, in line the ALP-river motif), to come down to the scene of the crime.  It also upsets ALP, "the old liffopotamus."

Once again, we got another fun and fascinating passage today.  I will be back tomorrow.