Age of Iron

by

J. M. Coetzee

Vercueil Character Analysis

Vercueil is an enigmatic homeless man who unexpectedly enters Mrs. Curren’s life. Mrs. Curren initially perceives his presence as intrusive and unwelcome, but as the narrative unfolds, he becomes her closest friend and companion. Vercueil's background remains largely a mystery. Coetzee describes him as disheveled, often inebriated, and living on the fringes of society. However, notably, there are no references to his race. As Mrs. Curren confronts her mortality, Vercueil becomes a constant, albeit unconventional, companion. Despite his rough exterior and seeming apathy, Vercueil exhibits moments of surprising empathy and understanding. Toward the end of the novel, he promises Mrs. Curren that he will help her end her life whenever she feels she is ready. Although there is something disturbing about his offer—especially because he often seems a bit too eager to carry it out—Mrs. Curren appreciates his presence and develops a profound connection with him.

Vercueil Quotes in Age of Iron

The Age of Iron quotes below are all either spoken by Vercueil or refer to Vercueil. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Violence and Perspective Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Who deserves anything? In a quick fury I thrust the purse at him. “What do you believe in, then? Taking? Taking what you want? Go on: take!”

Calmly he took the purse, emptied it of thirty rand and some coins, and handed it back. Then off he went, the dog jauntily at his heels. In half an hour he was back; I heard the clink of bottles.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:

“[…] Charity: from the Latin word for the heart. It is as hard to receive as to give. It takes as much effort. I wish you would learn that. I wish you would learn something instead of just lying around.”

A lie: charity, caritas, has nothing to do with the heart. But what does it matter if my sermons rest on false etymologies? He barely listens when I speak to him. Perhaps, despite those keen bird-eyes, he is more befuddled with drink than I know. Or perhaps, finally, he does not care. Care: the true root of charity. I look for him to care, and he does not. Because he is beyond caring. Beyond caring and beyond care.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

I played as badly as ever, misreading the same chords as half a century ago, repeating fingering mistakes grown by now into the bone, never to be corrected. (The bones prized above all archaeologists, I remember, are those gnarled with disease or splintered by an arrowhead: bones marked with a history from a time before history.)

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Related Symbols: Cancer
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Ever since Vercueil took my money he has been drinking; steadily, drinking not only wine but brandy. Some days he does not drink till noon, using the hours of abstinence to make surrender more voluptuous. More often he is intoxicated by the time he leaves the house in mid-morning.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Page Number: 44-45
Explanation and Analysis:

How easy it is to love a child, how hard to love what a child turns into! Once upon a time, with his fists to his ears and his eyes pinched shut in ecstasy, this creature too floated in a woman’s womb, drank of her blood, belly to belly. He too passed through the gates of bone into the radiance outside, was allowed to know mother-love, amor matris. Then in the course of time was weaned away from it, made to stand alone, and began to grow dry, stunted, crooked. A life apart, deprived, like all lives; but in this case, surely, more undernourished than most. A man in his middle years still sucking on bottles, yearning for the original bliss, reaching for it in his stupors.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil, Mrs. Curren’s Daughter
Page Number: 57-58
Explanation and Analysis:

“Tell this to your daughter,” said Vercueil quietly. “She will come.”

“No.”

“Tell her right now. Phone her in. America. Tell her you need her here.”

“No.”

“Then don't tell her afterwards, when it is too late. She won’t forgive you.”

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil (speaker), Mrs. Curren’s Daughter
Related Symbols: Cancer
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Vercueil held out the bottle. A full four inches were gone. I pushed his hand away. “I don't want to drink any more,” I said.

“Go on,” he said: “get drunk for a change.”

“No!” I exclaimed. A tipsy anger flared up in me against his crudity, his indifference. What was I doing here? In the exhausted car the two of us must have looked like nothing so much as belated refugees from the platteland of the Great Depression. All we lacked was a coir mattress and a chicken-coop tied on the roof. I snatched the bottle from his hand; but while I was still rolling down the window to throw it out, he wrested it back.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil (speaker)
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

I say I do not want to be put to sleep. The truth is, without sleep I cannot endure. Whatever else it brings, the Diconal at least brings sleep or a simulacrum of sleep. As the pain recedes, as time quickens, as the horizon lifts, my attention, concentrated like a burning-glass on the pain, can slacken for a while; I can draw breath, unclench my hailed hands, straighten my legs.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil, Mrs. Curren’s Daughter
Related Symbols: Cancer
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:

I have the story now of how he lost the use of his fingers. It was in an accident at sea. They had to abandon ship. In the scramble his hand was caught in a pulley and crashed. All night he floated on a raft with seven other men and a boy, in agony. The next day they were picked up by a Russian trawler and his hand was given attention. But by then it was too late.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil, Mrs. Curren’s Daughter
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:

We share a bed, folded one upon the other like a page folded in two, like two wings folded: old mates, bunkmates, conjoined, conjugal. Lectus genialis, lectus adversus. His toe-nails, when he takes off his shoes, are yellow, almost brown, like horn. Feet that he keeps out of water for fear of falling: falling into depths where he cannot breathe. A dry creature, a creature of air, like those locust-fairies in Shakespeare with their whipstock of cricket’s bone, lash of spider-film. Huge swarms of them borne out to sea on the wind, out of sight of land, tiring, settling one upon another upon another, resolving to drown the Atlantic by their numbers. Swallowed, all of them, to the last. Brittle wings on the sea-floor sighing like a forest of leaves; dead eyes by the million; and the crabs moving among them, clutching, grinding.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:

“Is it time?” I said.

I got back into bed, into the tunnel between the cold sheets. The curtains parted; he came in beside me. For the first time I smelled nothing. He took me in his arms and held me with mighty force, so that the breath went out of me in a rush. From that embrace there was no warmth to be had.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Related Symbols: Cancer
Page Number: 198
Explanation and Analysis:
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Vercueil Quotes in Age of Iron

The Age of Iron quotes below are all either spoken by Vercueil or refer to Vercueil. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Violence and Perspective Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Who deserves anything? In a quick fury I thrust the purse at him. “What do you believe in, then? Taking? Taking what you want? Go on: take!”

Calmly he took the purse, emptied it of thirty rand and some coins, and handed it back. Then off he went, the dog jauntily at his heels. In half an hour he was back; I heard the clink of bottles.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:

“[…] Charity: from the Latin word for the heart. It is as hard to receive as to give. It takes as much effort. I wish you would learn that. I wish you would learn something instead of just lying around.”

A lie: charity, caritas, has nothing to do with the heart. But what does it matter if my sermons rest on false etymologies? He barely listens when I speak to him. Perhaps, despite those keen bird-eyes, he is more befuddled with drink than I know. Or perhaps, finally, he does not care. Care: the true root of charity. I look for him to care, and he does not. Because he is beyond caring. Beyond caring and beyond care.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

I played as badly as ever, misreading the same chords as half a century ago, repeating fingering mistakes grown by now into the bone, never to be corrected. (The bones prized above all archaeologists, I remember, are those gnarled with disease or splintered by an arrowhead: bones marked with a history from a time before history.)

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Related Symbols: Cancer
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Ever since Vercueil took my money he has been drinking; steadily, drinking not only wine but brandy. Some days he does not drink till noon, using the hours of abstinence to make surrender more voluptuous. More often he is intoxicated by the time he leaves the house in mid-morning.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Page Number: 44-45
Explanation and Analysis:

How easy it is to love a child, how hard to love what a child turns into! Once upon a time, with his fists to his ears and his eyes pinched shut in ecstasy, this creature too floated in a woman’s womb, drank of her blood, belly to belly. He too passed through the gates of bone into the radiance outside, was allowed to know mother-love, amor matris. Then in the course of time was weaned away from it, made to stand alone, and began to grow dry, stunted, crooked. A life apart, deprived, like all lives; but in this case, surely, more undernourished than most. A man in his middle years still sucking on bottles, yearning for the original bliss, reaching for it in his stupors.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil, Mrs. Curren’s Daughter
Page Number: 57-58
Explanation and Analysis:

“Tell this to your daughter,” said Vercueil quietly. “She will come.”

“No.”

“Tell her right now. Phone her in. America. Tell her you need her here.”

“No.”

“Then don't tell her afterwards, when it is too late. She won’t forgive you.”

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil (speaker), Mrs. Curren’s Daughter
Related Symbols: Cancer
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Vercueil held out the bottle. A full four inches were gone. I pushed his hand away. “I don't want to drink any more,” I said.

“Go on,” he said: “get drunk for a change.”

“No!” I exclaimed. A tipsy anger flared up in me against his crudity, his indifference. What was I doing here? In the exhausted car the two of us must have looked like nothing so much as belated refugees from the platteland of the Great Depression. All we lacked was a coir mattress and a chicken-coop tied on the roof. I snatched the bottle from his hand; but while I was still rolling down the window to throw it out, he wrested it back.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil (speaker)
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

I say I do not want to be put to sleep. The truth is, without sleep I cannot endure. Whatever else it brings, the Diconal at least brings sleep or a simulacrum of sleep. As the pain recedes, as time quickens, as the horizon lifts, my attention, concentrated like a burning-glass on the pain, can slacken for a while; I can draw breath, unclench my hailed hands, straighten my legs.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil, Mrs. Curren’s Daughter
Related Symbols: Cancer
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:

I have the story now of how he lost the use of his fingers. It was in an accident at sea. They had to abandon ship. In the scramble his hand was caught in a pulley and crashed. All night he floated on a raft with seven other men and a boy, in agony. The next day they were picked up by a Russian trawler and his hand was given attention. But by then it was too late.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil, Mrs. Curren’s Daughter
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:

We share a bed, folded one upon the other like a page folded in two, like two wings folded: old mates, bunkmates, conjoined, conjugal. Lectus genialis, lectus adversus. His toe-nails, when he takes off his shoes, are yellow, almost brown, like horn. Feet that he keeps out of water for fear of falling: falling into depths where he cannot breathe. A dry creature, a creature of air, like those locust-fairies in Shakespeare with their whipstock of cricket’s bone, lash of spider-film. Huge swarms of them borne out to sea on the wind, out of sight of land, tiring, settling one upon another upon another, resolving to drown the Atlantic by their numbers. Swallowed, all of them, to the last. Brittle wings on the sea-floor sighing like a forest of leaves; dead eyes by the million; and the crabs moving among them, clutching, grinding.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:

“Is it time?” I said.

I got back into bed, into the tunnel between the cold sheets. The curtains parted; he came in beside me. For the first time I smelled nothing. He took me in his arms and held me with mighty force, so that the breath went out of me in a rush. From that embrace there was no warmth to be had.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Related Symbols: Cancer
Page Number: 198
Explanation and Analysis: