what does it mean when there is Verb+Adverb+Verb

Question

おかげで僕は、辛うじてこいつらへの不信感を誤魔化せるギリギリに留まっていられた。

In English, would we use a comma here? I heard somewhere that Japanese doesn't use commas in those situations. I feel like the same scenario would be:

世に囁かれる星の数にも届くそれらは、一種の願望である。- I think there should be a comma between 囁かれる and 星. As in "those who are rumored by the world, those who even reach to the number of stares are kind of a wish"

Is this the same scenario? as in like:

Thanks to it, I was able to evade the distrust to them, (and) was able to stop it with effort.

I am also thinking, why not to add te form in there? like as in

おかげで僕は、辛うじてこいつらへの不信感を誤魔化せてギリギリに留まっていられた。

Am I understanding it right? I feel like my translation apart from being really literal, it is really goofy as well.

Answer 1

There is no strict rule for putting commas. In this case, the predicate part is long enough and it is reasonable to place a comma (for a pause) after 僕は.

As for the question, ギリギリに is not an adverb here, rather simply a noun ギリギリ + に meaning at the limit. So the sentence means Thanks to it, I was barely able to stay at the limit where I could distract the doubts towards them. (It is ambiguous what 辛うじて modifies.)

Answer 2

ギリギリ here is used as a noun for ギリギリな／のところ, and it is modified by the clause こいつらへの不信感を誤魔化せる (or 辛うじて〜誤魔化せる if you interpret 辛うじて as modifying 誤魔化せる, instead of 留まっていられた.)

I wouldn’t put a comma there.