Initially known as a fearless worker on the bridge, Macedonian immigrant Nicholas Temelcoff later leads a more peaceful life as a baker. He is deeply talented at manual work but remains reserved, preferring to keep to himself than to engage with his colleagues. He proves generous and capable of self-sacrifice when he saves the nun from falling off the bridge. This episode also allows him to reveal his romantic sensibilities, as he soon becomes enamored of the mysterious nun. He makes many efforts to integrate Canadian society, working hard to learn English, a process he enjoys but finds more difficult than his acrobatics on the bridge.
Nicholas Temelcoff Quotes in In the Skin of a Lion
The In the Skin of a Lion quotes below are all either spoken by Nicholas Temelcoff or refer to Nicholas Temelcoff. 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:
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Part 1: Chapter 2: The Bridge
Quotes
So when customers step in at any time, what they are entering is an old courtyard of the Balkans. A violin. Olive trees. Permanent evening. Now the arbor-like wallpaper makes sense to her. Now the parrot has a language.
Related Characters:
Alice Gull, Nicholas Temelcoff, Kosta
Related Themes:
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Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: Chapter 1: Palace of Purification
Quotes
In books he had read, even those romances he swallowed during childhood, Patrick never believed that characters lived only on the page. They altered when the author’s eye was somewhere else. (…) Each character had his own time zone, his own lamp, otherwise they were just men from nowhere.
Related Characters:
Patrick Lewis, Alice Gull, Nicholas Temelcoff
Related Themes:
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Explanation and Analysis:
His own life was no longer a single story but part of a mural, which was a falling together of accomplices.
Related Characters:
Patrick Lewis, Alice Gull, Nicholas Temelcoff, Cato, Hana
Related Themes:
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Nicholas Temelcoff Character Timeline in In the Skin of a Lion
The timeline below shows where the character Nicholas Temelcoff appears in In the Skin of a Lion. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 1: Chapter 2: The Bridge
...a girl’s face and notices her habit. Terrified, the girl cannot speak, but the man, Nicholas Temelcoff, unable to yell because of the pain, tells her that she should scream to...
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Nicholas evaluates the situation and decides that they will need to swing to a higher level....
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...off the bridge—a girl known for being clumsy and unlucky—is gone forever. In the meantime, Temelcoff and the girl walk off the bridge without attracting any attention. They walk through a...
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Finally, Nicholas shows the nun the direction to the Ohrida Lake Restaurant, where his friend Kosta opens...
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Nicholas is known on the bridge for being exceptionally talented and fearless. He is given the...
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Nicholas’s solitary, risky work allows him to be paid one dollar per hour, whereas other workers...
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In the restaurant, Nicholas walks past a parrot called Alicia to search for brandy. When he returns, he offers...
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Noticing a scar on the nun’s nose, Temelcoff asks her about it and encourages her to speak, despite her apparent diffidence. Wanting her...
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As Temelcoff keeps on talking, mixing words of English—which he learned by listening to songs on the...
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...and looks at herself in a mirror. She passes her hand through her hair, as Temelcoff had wanted to do, and puts her face on the cold surface of the counter....
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...are trapped in a new space from which everything outside seems foreign and invisible. However, Temelcoff walks off on his own, entering steel and wood cages hanging unstably on the bridge....
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From his hanging position, Temelcoff calls out to the driver handling steel. Once, he was doing this when a traveler...
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...Although, a few years earlier or later, the woman would have smelled the flour in Temelcoff’s hair, what she now remembers is the roughness of the man’s callused hands.
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Even though Commissioner Harris has never spoken to Nicholas Temelcoff directly, he sees how Temelcoff listens attentively to the engineer’s instructions, never looking the...
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Tied to a rope, Nicholas steps off the bridge without marking a pause, feeling the pressure of the rope against...
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In Macedonia, Daniel Stoyanoff, a member of Nicholas’s village of Oschima, bragged about his experience in North America. After losing an arm in...
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When war erupts in the Balkans, Nicholas is twenty-five. After his village is destroyed, he leaves with three friends to reach Switzerland...
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When Nicholas finally arrives, after two of his friends died on the journey, he sees Canada as...
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...on stage, to the point that knowledgeable immigrants could play an entire actor’s part. When Nicholas began working on the bridge, he kept to himself, muttering sentences in English to himself...
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In the restaurant, Nicholas is woken up by a doctor taking care of his arm, while Kosta watches on....
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The day after his accident, Nicholas feels that the city’s streets look new to him and he searches for the nun...
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A week later, once his shoulder is healed, Nicholas returns to the bridge. He ignores people’s stories about the nun who vanished and, instead,...
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Part 2: Chapter 1: Palace of Purification
Patrick and Hana sometimes go to Hana’s favorite place, Geranium Bakery, where her friend Nicholas Temelcoff shows them around the bakery. One night, Hana shows Patrick some old photographs and...
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...he reads about the nun who fell off the bridge and discovers a picture of Nicholas Temelcoff. Although Patrick wants to find the picture of the nun, he realizes that no...
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...a return to the past which only literature can achieve. When Patrick goes to see Nicholas Temelcoff at the bakery, he realizes that Alice must be the nun, taking on the...
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After Patrick leaves the bakery, Nicholas keeps on thinking. Although Nicholas never talks about the past, as he focused only on...
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Part 3: Chapter 2: Maritime Theatre
When Patrick reaches Geranium Bakery, Nicholas Temelcoff hugs him vigorously. Patrick then asks about Hana and Nicholas tells him that she...
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...him about the bag and that he ran out to search for Alice, accompanied by Nicholas Temelcoff. When he heard the explosion nearby, he ran to Alice and took her in...
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