"(but all goes west!)"

(83.24-85.19)  Today's passage picks up in mid-paragraph from where yesterday's left off.  HCE and the Cad have made a tentative peace after HCE has promised to loan the Cad some money, and the Cad has been daydreaming about the pubs he will visit with his new treasure.  The Cad now makes a series of gestures toward HCE that could be seen as either friendly or hostile and finally takes "his friend's leave" (or, as McHugh suggests, takes French leave -- i.e., leaves without giving notice).   In keeping with the friendly/hostile dichotomy, the two men then exchange "the pax in embrace or poghue puxy as practised between brothers of the same breast" -- or in other words, they embrace in peace or give a punch to the other's lips (as noted by McHugh) -- and ratify their torgantruce (McHugh notes that "tuargain" is Italian for "battering" or "bombardment," which indicates that they're agreeing to further hostilities, to peace, or to peace from further hostilities).  

The Cad goes off to fight further battles with "some rival rialtos," while HCE stays at home to recover from his (relatively minor) wounds.  Of particular note to me in this passage on the top of page 84 (and sprinkled throughout this chapter) is the references (such as "bull's run," "ballsbluffed," and "confederate") to the U.S. Civil War.  HCE "reports the occurance" (the misspelling of words using an "e" for an "a" and vice versa has been used by Joyce throughout the Wake as a reference to the misspelling of "hesitancy" as "hesitency" in a smoking-gun letter momentarily vindicating Joyce's beloved Parnell) in hopes that the proper authorities might give him some healing lotion or opium after hearing of his plight and viewing his bruises.  In actuality, though, HCE's wounds are superficial:  "his allround health appeared to be middling along" and "not one of the two hundred and six bones and five hundred and one muscles in his corso was a whit the whorse for her whacking."

The narrator now turns away for the moment from HCE's encounter with the Cad, and, "wurming along gradually for our savings backtowards motherwaters so many miles from bank and Dublin stone" (i.e., back to ALP and the river at the beginning of Finnegans Wake, where we're always inevitably headed toward), begins to talk about "the still more salient point of the politish leanings and town pursuits of our forebeer, El Don De Dunelli."  In other words, the narrator's going to spend a moment talking about HCE's forays into the public life.  Before HCE's brushes with danger, the narrator tells us, he passed out literature for public edification and nearly took public office.

Now for my near-daily mantra.  As with most passages from the Wake, today's was tough going at first, but things began to make some sense upon closer inspection.  I recently reviewed part of the introduction to Tindall's A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake.  While I've been a bit critical of Tindall's explication of the Wake, I find the introduction to his book to be helpful, illuminating, and even encouraging.  Here's one passage that rang true with me and wanted to share:

A form for the feeling of encountering the world, the Wake displays in three layers the stages of this daily encounter.  Some things in Wake and world alike are immediately evident.  Some things, resisting our first attempts, may be understood with a little effort.  But other things, whatever our efforts, baffle us.  To the pleasures of easy and difficult discovery Joyce added the pain of frustration.