Page 22 - GALIET BEING´S FLEUR: Eldrich IV

novel’s linguistic failure to convey coherence as we are left with a perplexing nihilistic circumference where we discover its narrative to burst into fragmentary n o t h i n g s. Therefore, from this perspective, we are bound not only to struggle with Fleur’s appearances and disappearances through the evanescent meanings of the page but also with Pauline’s all-too-deceiving representations for she is as incoherent as Nanapush: Erdrich’s novel that becomes a magic construction as ephemeral as language itself.
Through the failures experienced by both narrations, Erdrich’s entices us to “seeing” Fleur with her very metaphor: an “owl in our tongues” for Fleur seems to possess language in her veins. Hers is a body language manifested in a carnaval of physical desire and angst, and like an imperceptible shadow, Fleur disappears, in the end, without trace 3⁄4 rumors have it that after “killing” Napoleon, she carries his tongue “wrapped in a fishskin...enabling her to walk without tracks” (Erdrich 215). This false (or true?) rendition, nonetheless, implies that she is empowered by tongue-less-ness 3⁄4 rather than disempowered by it as claimed by Ferrari 3⁄4 (although we are told that Pauline kills him!).
Fleur, like a shadow, belongs to the moment 3⁄4 to presence itself and like presence, she is endearingly “omniscient” throughout the novel: her many drownings in Matchimanito Lake (Erdrich 10-11) and her journey west to visit the spirits of her ancestors to gamble for her child’s life (Erdrich 159), a place of “... no fences, no poles, no lines,
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