The Colossus Vignettes
By David J. Schwartz

1. Stray

A lamassus followed Jimmy home one day.

"Mom," Jimmy said, "a lamassus followed me home."

Johnny's mom was in the kitchen, working under the sink. "That's nice. Could you hand me that wrench, honey?"

Jimmy did as he was asked. "What should I do about the lamassus?"

"See if he wants a carrot."

"He's a lamassus, Mom, not a llama."

"Oh." The sound of whining metal came from beneath the sink. "What's the difference again?"

"A lamassus is sixteen feet tall, with a bull's body, a man's head, and wings. A llama lives in the Andes and eats grass."

"And carrots."

"I guess so."

"What does this lamassus want?" asked Jimmy's mom.

"He wants a job."

"Is he good with plumbing?"

"I'll ask."

Jimmy went to the front porch. The lamassus stood in the yard, his stone hooves making deep prints in the lawn. His long, curly beard quivered in the breeze, and he stretched his long wings.

"Hello, James." The lamassus' voice was like gravel under a tire.

"Mom wants to know if you know about plumbing," Jimmy said.

"I regret not, James. My work experience is limited to guardianship, for which I am well suited. I worked in Sargon II's palace for many years, with never a complaint."

"OK." Jimmy started back into the house, then turned back. "Could you maybe stand on the sidewalk? Dad really loves his lawn. One time I watered it with flat soda and a whole patch of grass died. He was pretty upset."

"Were there executions?"

"No. But he cried."

The lamassus nodded. "I understand." He moved carefully towards the street.

Jimmy's mom was struggling with a stuck water valve. Jimmy waited until she managed to open it and came out from under the sink.

"He doesn't know about plumbing," Jimmy said.

"That's OK." Jimmy's mom turned on the faucet. "It's fixed. What can he do?"

"He says he used to guard Sargon II's palace."

"Where's that?"

"I think Assyria? I found him at the Mesopotamian exhibit."

"How did he get there?"

"Archaeologists."

Jimmy's mom wiped her hands on an old towel. "Why did this lamassus follow you home, Jimmy?"

Jimmy looked at his shoes. "It's embarrassing."

"Tell me."

"He thinks I'm a king or something."

"Jimmy? Did you tell the lamassus you were a king?"

"No! He thinks that because I'm wearing purple." Jimmy wore a Minnesota Vikings jersey that was a size too big for him. "He says only kings wear purple. I made him stop calling me 'Majesty,' but he says he can only serve a king, so he wants a job."

Before Jimmy's mom could speak there was a roar from the front of the house that made the windows shake. They ran to the front door. The lamassus stood on the sidewalk with its teeth bared, looking at the trees.

"A gray rodent tried to walk across your father's lawn," said the lamassus. "I convinced him to try another route."

"Nice job," said Jimmy's mom. "When can you start?"

2. Interview

The human resources director met Ramses II on the terrace outside the office building.

"Mr. Ramses?"

"Ramses II." Ramses II's voice set off every car alarm within six blocks.

"Good to meet you. My name is Quinn." Quinn decided not to ask Ramses II to shake hands. He sat on the edge of a planter, opened his laptop and looked up. Ramses II was almost ninety feet tall. He wore a carved loincloth and the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt.

"Please, have a seat," Quinn said.

There were no chairs large enough, so the gray stone giant knelt on the concrete. Half a dozen pigeons lifted off from his shoulders, then landed again once he had settled into position. His head still stood five stories above Quinn.

"Before we begin," Quinn said, "I'd like to recommend that in the future you send in a résumé if you'd like an interview. You gave my assistant quite a scare when you appeared at her eighth-floor window."

"How is she?"

"She's on medical leave. Did you bring a résumé?"

"Yes." Ramses II offered the human resources director three sheets of paper pinched gently between a massive finger and thumb. Quinn took the papers and looked them over.

"Did you type this?" he asked.

"No. A woman on the Upper East Side needed a piano moved. We bartered."

"It says here you worked as a tour guide and a recreational transport facilitator at Abu Simbel. What is a recreational transport facilitator?"

"I allowed young children to ride on my shoulders for a fee."

"I see." Quinn made a note. "What is Abu Simbel?"

"A temple on the Nile River near Aswan, where I came from."

"How did you come to New York?"

"I walked. My brothers were content to work in tourism, but I hunger for power such as I once wielded. A tourist told me that New York was the capitol of the world, so I decided to start my conquest here, with your multinational corporation."

"But you walked?"

"Yes, along the ocean floor. It took several weeks. I took a wrong turn at the Azores."

"Interesting. It also says here that you defeated the Hittites in 1274 BC at Kadesh?"

"Yes. It was a great victory. The Hittites ceded the territories which you call Syria and Palestine, and my realm extended from the Fourth Cataract to Syria."

"You know, I did some research, and it seems that the consensus is that despite Ramses II's boasts of victory, the battle at Kadesh was more or less a draw."

Ramses II said nothing.

"That in itself isn't necessarily a problem," said Quinn. "That's just good PR, and besides, you got the territory. But my understanding is that you yourself are only a representation of Ramses II and not the pharaoh himself. I daresay that if the real Ramses II--living or dead--were to come to GlobalCorp we would be interested in perhaps retaining him as a consultant. But I'm not clear on what you yourself can do for us."

Ramses II said nothing.

"You can't type. You can't use a phone. You can't, in fact, enter the building. I looked into getting you some work in one of our warehouses, but I wouldn't be able to get you in the doors. The unions won't let me put you on the docks. If you were me, what kind of position would you hire yourself for?"

"I would like to give the orders."

"Yeah, well, I'd like a company parking space, but I don't think it's going to happen."

Ramses II said nothing. His shoulders were twenty-five feet across, his nose was four feet high, and his outstretched hands were sixteen feet long. Quinn had an idea.

"Do you ever get tired?" he asked.

"No," said Ramses II. "I walked across the ocean and felt no fatigue. Why?"

"Here's the thing. I pay $400 a month for a parking spot in a ramp six blocks from here. If you'd let me park my M-Class on your hand, I wouldn't have to worry about it being broken into or anything. I could pay you $150 a month. I'll get a ramp, pull up, get out, and you can lift it up out of harm's way until I come back. What do you say?"

Ramses II looked at his hands. "$250."

"$200."

Ramses II's shoulders slumped. "Very well."

"Great." Quinn packed up his laptop and his notes. "You can start tomorrow. It's been a pleasure."

Quinn walked back into the building, leaving Ramses II alone on the terrace with the pigeons.

3. Docent

All the girls in Mrs. Alighieri's class were in love with David, as Michelangelo himself must have been. His pouting lips, his long arms and smooth, oversized hands, his high buttocks--although these last were hidden, for the sake of modesty, by an artfully draped and folded loincloth. This, too, tantalized the girls, for the cloth shifted as he limped through the Galleria dell'Accademia, revealing flashes of his upper thighs. He limped not because of his reconstructed toes, but because his left leg was longer than his right, for reasons that only the sculptor knew for certain. But these imperfections made the girls love him all the more.

He stopped to say a few words about each piece in the Accademia. He knew the art there better than anyone ever had; he had lived with it for one hundred and fifty years. He spoke its language, and translated it into an Italian that bears vestiges of the language of the Medicis. He did not lecture, or recite--he composed original lyrical works for every tour, flirting with the women (and sometimes the men), joking with them, until they were giddy with the attention and with their new, unexpected appreciation for art.

As he spoke he shifted the sling from one hand to another, not nervously, but as if his hands were accustomed to moving, to holding, to shaping things. The girls had no names for the feelings those hands stirred within them, and this was the terrified glee of adolescence.

David welcomed their infatuation. Every eye in the Accademia was on him, and this was as it should be, it seemed to him. Vanity was his new Goliath, one which he had neither weapon nor desire to fight. Vanity and not modesty had led to the loincloth; insecurity over his perpetually flaccid member outweighed concern over the way patrons--especially American tourists--reacted to his nudity.

He led Mrs. Alighieri's class to the Prisoners, that quartet of unfinished figures trapped in stone, intended to bear the weight of a tomb upon their shoulders. This was David's least favorite part of the tour. The more sensitive among the girls detected a note of anguish, long suppressed, almost become part of the timbre of his stony yet still boyish voice. They did not know that for a time the Youthful Slave was removed from the exhibit because his eternal struggle to escape the enclosing marble had become animate, his hips twisting pathetically, pointlessly.

At night the Bearded Slave spoke to David; shame kept him silent during the day. They spoke of their creator, and it pained David to hear the Bearded Slave speak of his hate for Michelangelo. Despite the terrible fate of the unfinished Prisoners, David loved the sculptor. He was beautiful, and he felt no shame in taking pleasure in his beauty. If he could, he would have wept for his ugly, trapped cousins. But he would not curse Buonarroti, the hands which created his own, huge and strong and beautiful.

4. Review

The weather this past Tuesday evening was mixed, appropriate to the performance that took place near exit 323 of I-80, twenty miles west of Cheyenne. The Lincoln Shakespeare Company's touring production of "Twelfth Night" swung from inspired to insipid, but was for the most part middling. In sum, the production rarely came nearer to the soul of the Bard of Avon's text than the spears of lightning which flashed soundlessly in the northwest sky did to the so-called stage.

The outdoor location was not chosen haphazardly; commuters and connoisseurs of local landmarks will recognize it as the location of the Lincoln Monument sculpted by Robert Russin. If you're like me you've driven past the spot hundreds of times, but never stopped before. The bronze head stands twelve and a half feet high and serves locals and pilgrims alike as a sort of oracle, sowing platitudes from atop its pillar of granite.

Being only a head, the Russin Lincoln doesn't travel much. So Mohammed being unable to go to the mountain, the mountain has come to Mohammed. The mountain, in this case, being the Lincoln Shakespeare Company founded by the Lincoln of the Memorial in Washington, D.C., a likeness carved from Georgia white marble and possessed of a stentorian voice well suited to the role of Duke Orsino, the noble, clueless and self-important object of Lady Viola's affections. French Lincoln (such was the billing in the program provided, most of the cast being identified by either sculptor or place of origin) skillfully conveyed both Orsino's egoism and his corresponding obsession with the Countess Olivia, and his performance was one of the high points of the evening.

The role of Viola is played by the slight--only about eleven feet high--bronze sculpture of a young Lincoln which once stood in a park in Decatur, Illinois. Despite the wealth of commentary to be made upon the gender politics of a man playing a woman forced to disguise herself as a man, Decatur Lincoln appeared either unable to grasp or unwilling to grapple with any of it. His voice was often lost in the night breezes, his performance so subtle as to seem timid. Decatur did double duty as director of the production, and his stagecraft is little better than his acting. The costumes were spare, the stage even more so, which left the success of the production resting entirely on the not always capable shoulders of the cast.

Two bright spots were Dixon Lincoln as Sir Andrew and Fairbanks Lincoln as Olivia's steward Malvolio. Whereas Bascom Hill Lincoln (a former fixture of the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison) played the boorish Sir Toby so clownishly as to be entirely un-funny, Dixon Lincoln took full advantage of his naïve appearance (that of the Great Emancipator as a young soldier) to infuse the often superfluous role of Sir Andrew with heartbreaking hilarity. There was also pathos in Fairbanks Lincoln's Malvolio--almost, one might argue, too much. Fairbanks Lincoln being the smallest of the cast, and of a rustic though dignified appearance, Bascom's Sir Toby and the clown Feste as played by the massive Mulligan Lincoln came across as cruel in opposition. In part this had to do with the fact of Mulligan Lincoln's stature--I am all for casting against type, but to ask the audience to accept that an eighteen-foot bronze man has to live by his wits is something of a stretch.

There was something revelatory, however, about a moment in Gage Lincoln's performance in the aforementioned role of Countess Olivia. In the climactic scene of discovery, where the depth and breadth of possible worlds is made manifest in the revelation of the twins to each other and to their respective objects of affection, Gage Lincoln's voice captured for a moment the essence of Shakespeare's play, that childlike amazement at the vicissitudes of fortune. Olivia, having fallen in love with Viola (disguised as Orsino's man Cesario) and married her presumed-dead-but-in-truth-surviving brother Sebastian (played adequately by Ream Lincoln) thinking them one and the same, is brought to the brink of despair by the play's confusion of identity. When the truth is revealed, Olivia's line is but two words ("Most wonderful!"), but Gage managed to convey a world of meaning with them: wonder at the marvels of reproduction, the folly and serendipity of love, her own foolishness, even, perhaps, at the wonder of a play performed by actors of living stone. It was all the more surprising considering that Gage's performance to that point had been that of a bored prima donna, hardly justified by a middling performance in a touring production.

Mention should be made of the role played by our own Russin Bronze Lincoln, who made a cameo appearance as the Captain in the opening scene of the play. An interesting directorial choice, given the role of the Captain as a helper--I can only suppose that Washington Lincoln was making a point about Divine Providence.

The Lincoln Shakespeare Company will be appearing at exit 323, weather permitting, through Sunday evening; plans for a return in the fall with "A Midsummer Night's Dream" have not yet been finalized.

5. Bluff

Shiva's four hands spun the cards out across the Antarctic ice so quickly that if he had wanted to cheat, no one would have been able to spot it. A representation of the Ganges flowed from his matted concrete locks, and his smile was serenity itself.

"Texas Hold 'Em," he said, and dealt two down cards to each player. The backs of the sixteen-foot long cards had a logo for Big Deal Restorations. Under the logo a human-like figure stood ringed by scaffolding, smiling.

The Statue of Liberty and Cristo Redentor having already placed the blinds, betting began with the Leshan Buddha. He checked his hole cards and tossed two enormous ice chunks into the pot. "Twenty," he said.

"Back to me already?" Shiva asked. "I think you're bluffing again. I'll see that twenty and raise you twenty more."

"Check," said the Statue of Liberty, who had the two of hearts and the eight of spades.

"Let me ask you something," said Cristo Redentor as he checked the bet. "Was your decision to leave New York Harbor political?"

"Let's just play cards," said Lady Liberty.

"Check," said the Leshan Buddha. Even seated, he was two hundred feet tall, the largest of the four.

Shiva checked, then burned a card from the top of the deck. He spread two hands questioningly and with the other two he dealt the king of diamonds and the four and ten of spades face up in the center of the circle. "Bets?"

"Check," said Liberty.

"I fold," said Cristo Redentor.

"I'll bet it was politics," said the Buddha, and tossed another ice chunk into the pot. "Ten."

"You should talk." Shiva raised twenty.

"Raise twenty," said Liberty.

"Thirty more," said the Buddha. "Nobody asked me," he said to Shiva.

"Check," said Shiva.

"Check," said Liberty. "It wasn't a political thing. I just wanted to travel, you know? But the second I started climbing off the pedestal--and that was a tricky maneuver, let me tell you--they started speculating that I was protesting something. It was ridiculous. If you want to know the truth, I don't really pay much attention to current events."

Shiva burned another card and turned up the three of spades.

"The worst thing was the harbor," said Liberty. "I've been looking at that water for over a hundred years, but I never realized I'd be wading in it. Disgusting. Not to mention, bad for the skin."

"It's your bet," Shiva said.

"Twenty," said Liberty. "Anyways, I didn't want to stay in there any longer than necessary, so I headed for the Jersey Shore. I wasn't halfway there before the mayor of NYC was there in a helicopter, telling me I couldn't leave. I'm neck deep in salt water and he's trying to tell me the city needs me."

"Raise twenty," said the Buddha. "What did you tell him?"

"I told him it was nothing personal. I told him the city had treated me well, mostly, and I appreciated that, but I really needed to get out of town for a while."

"Dealer folds," said Shiva.

"Check," said Liberty. "So then the mayor starts in about me being a symbol."

"I hate that," said Cristo Redentor. "Did you know there were riots when I left Rio? A reporter asked me if it was the end of the world. I told her I just needed to stretch my legs."

"There was also a panic when I left Bangladore," said Shiva. "But it's understandable. When you are a symbol, everything you do is a symbolic act. To them we represent something transcendent, something not of this world, and so we are scrutinized."

"Sometimes I wish I was a representation of the Muslim god," said the Buddha.

"Muslims don't create representations of Allah," said Cristo Redentor. "They consider it idolatrous."

"Exactly," said the Buddha.

"You're not making any sense," says Cristo Redentor.

"Meditate on it," said the Leshan Buddha. "Are you going to deal that last card or not?"

"Hm? Ah." Shiva burned one last card and turned up the Jack of Diamonds. "I apologize."

"I understand about symbols," said the Buddha. "I was built at the confluence of three rivers to scare away the river monster. It doesn't mean there was a river monster there."

"I bet twenty," said Liberty. "What did they do when you left?"

"Raise twenty," said the Buddha. "They sent monks. Seemed like nice fellows. Not very convincing, however."

"Raise forty," said Liberty.

"Forty?" The Buddha tried to read Liberty's eyes, but her pupils were nearly invisible. He looked at his dwindling heap of ice chunks and shook his head. "Too rich for me. I fold."

"Liberty's pot," Shiva said.

"Thanks, boys," Liberty said as she raked up the ice. Each represented $10,000 of credit at Big Deal Restorations, and Liberty needed some work done. The points of her crown were wearing down, and she had recently dented her torch on a cliff.

"Let's see," said the Buddha.

"See what?"

"Your cards."

"You folded," said Liberty as she gathered the cards. "And it's my deal. Ante up, gentlemen."

The End

Story copyright David J. Schwartz, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com