Page 21 - GALIET BEING´S FLEUR: Eldrich IV
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(Erdrich 18), that no one noticed her “teeth, strong and sharp and very white” (Erdrich 18) and that she “grinned the white wolf grin a Pillager turns onto its victims ... “(Erdrich 19).
However, if Fleur does indeed transform herself and goes hunting outside her own body in the flesh of a bear, how is it possible that she is raped? Fleur could have easily escaped her “presumed” fate by merely transforming herself into seemingly a bear or wolf. As a result, Pauline’s narration of Fleur’s rape becomes incredible particularly since she doesn’t see it (perhaps because unlike Fleur, she is given to language):
“I closed my eyes and put my hands on my ears, so there is nothing more to describe but what I couldn’t block out: those yells from Russell, Fleur’s hoarse breath, so loud it filled me, her cry in the old language and our names repeated over and over among the words” (Erdrich 26).
Of course, all these claims are ill-conceived given the fact (or unfact?) that Fleur, in one of her utterances, tells Nanapush that, on this and other matters, “the Puyat lies” (Erdrich 38). In like manner, Nanapush later dismisses Pauline because, in Pauline opening her mouth and beginning “to wag her tongue”, she becomes “worse than a Nanapush” (an unconscious method of self-cruxifiction and another potent reason why, in addition to Pauline’s fissured repertoire, we must equally mistrust Nanapush’s seductive incantations). Pauline is also “given to improving truth” (Erdrich 39) to the point that her ability to deceive is “... so constant with her that it got to be a kind of truth” (Erdrich 53). This confirms the
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