Afghan Desert/the tailor taylor

We had our office on the ground floor of a building in Little Tokyo. It’s different now but back then there was a way about the enclave that had an air of intrigue and the exotic. To me it did anyway. Not so much to my partner, Kumagai. He’d lived here in J-town all the years of his life. If someone were to ask me to describe him, I’d say first, he saved my life though that’s not true. More the other way round. Or we saved each other more like it.

He began by writing hate-mail to himself.

The shot was to the missionary's temple. The shooter did not have regret at the time. It was the boy's first time to kill. He was 16. He was not told he had to do this but he stepped forward when his uncle motioned with a nod to the rifle. The uncle wa surprised when the nephew took up the rifle and put it to the temple of the kneeling man. The kneeling man was uttering a languge no one knew. The speech was medium and not in any hurry as if the speaker were speaking it to them all. But the uncle knew that he was not hurling insults at them. It would have been different had he been despising them. Maybe it would have ben better had he hated them. But it seemed he did not. He only spoke in this unknown tongue.

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At midnight he carries stones to the backyard. He'sa stones throw from divorce. Not really. He's married and had a fight. It's a kind of therapy, this middle of the night rendevous. They are of the weight and color of stones found at the very mouths of rivers, at the beginning of them. Or that's what he wishes them to be, something of enormity and purpose. But they are just stones for crying out loud. They've had children who have grown and moved on. Who'd know that such an empty nest would leave two birds room to bicker even more. He's tired. Muscles ache and sweat comes off his moustache. Is there of us a season of outpour when river, sweat and tears are all means to an end? He tired.
Colloquium was the name of a ship. He put it on the bow of his rowboat and rowed out with a stone and the tide. Every eveing he loads a boulder onto the rowboat goes to the center of the Lake and unloads. Sometimes the lake is very still and the Coloquium drifts and circles, crifts and circles. Then he unloads.

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The Tailor, Taylor/ The Bespoke/ Tailor Bereft/ Tailor at Sea/ The Tailor Sized

There was lightning and then there was low guttural thunder across the distances.
"Let me understand," the tailor, Siuvejas, said, "You wish me to make a suit for you to be buried in."
Toma nodded once.
With tailor's eyes, Siuvejas looked Toma up and down.
"No. I'm an old man, Mr....Mr... And to tell the truth there are many fine ready made suits we have.. You don't need to tailor a suit just to have it never to see daylight. A fine suit is meant to be seen and appreciated. Not meant to be buried six feet under."
"My father's will stated that I was to get a suit tailor made for me. It had this address and the name Siuvejas on the will itself."
"Isn't that something," Suivejas said and looked above the rim of his glasses as if following needle and thread freshly drawn through mended fabric."But do I know your father? Your name please."
Toma gazed around the tailors shop. It had a muffled quietness to it that comforted Toma. Outside the rain had started. Soon the streets would be pelted with rain drops and wash the Seattle city streets with another onslaught of Mid-October.
"No I wouldn't expect you to know him. It's Kashiwagi. His first name was Paul. I thought your father might remember but I doubted that too. It isn't important."
"Paul Kashiwagi. I would have remembered that name such as it is. If my father mentioned it, I don't remember. He's been dead for 15 years."
Toma looked up to try to see how the speaker's own words would affect him.
Siuvejas touched his brow, his glasses. "Wait...wait. My father bought this place from a Japanese man."
Toma wasn't sure if he should follow the tailor down a narrow corridor piled high with bolds of cloth.
"One year all my merchandise was ruined when there was a leak in the roof above," Siuvejas said when he saw Toma trail him.

He took me to the place where I was to work.
.....
"I know this place", Taylor said.
"How"?
"No, not that. I mean I can tell about places like this. Not that I've been here before but I know this place. Maybe not the exact details, but I know places like it. I've worked more than 40 years as a tailor. That kind of thing doesn't just dry up and disappear. You remember your skin being here. This is a placeof fabric, of manufacturer, a place of industry. until its in your skin. All were in place. The alignment of sighting the great spools, the desks as in combat readiness. A neatness persisted to the point of smelling it. You touch material, you work the fabric, rend it and cut it and then sew it together, all part of creation. Then you clothe a man.making him better than he is. You paint of him a picture of himself.

.........
"I know this is not where you were before but it will have to be. I'm sorry for this. A man of your dimensions, your talent..."
We walked in silence. The linen in piles on each side of us shone, brightened our way. Then we entered a large chamber of a room so extensive as to take my breath. Everyone smiled at me. I found it odd they should. Before I had the impression that all garment workers were slaves to the fabric king. And then something amazing happened. He told them.
"This is Mr. Siuvejas. And he will be working for us. Please continue with what you were doing before."
He was found selling light bulbs.

A bolt of purest white cotton out of nowhere unfurled before Siuvejas. Another, yet another, all down the line of cutters, to him it was as if a blinding came upon him. The bolts of white fabric in their unrolling struck the tables, echoed thunder on the metal surfaces and made the whole enclosure intimate. Siuvejas, overcome, leaned on a nearby table as the workers rendered their fabric.
The manager obliged. "What is it?"
"Everything.." The scene had sent its message to him by bone, down the marrow of his thigh and shank, up forearm and shoulder; a deep withering struck, electric.
The light kept filtering through the giant window fan that rotated quietly.
"I'd like to work here very much." Siuvejas said. "...very much". and turned away.
"Come up to my office. We can fill out your application and you can rest."
Siuvejas trailed behind the manager through the valley of the white linen and cotton. He began to speak as he followed the back of the manager and as motes of thread fell upon them all, their shoulders, their heads,

"I was told to come to the Japanese embassy to make a suit for the ambassador. I once lived in England under the name of Taylor. My real name is Siuvejas and I am from Lithuania I did not even know his name and did not particularly care to go to the Japanese but I went..."

The manager kept nodding his assent as he led the way to his office.

END

So I have come today and felt somewhat under ...They've planted trees for Sugihara. I didn't know his name at the time. His name actually means a plain of cedars. Cedars grow in all countires. It is fitting, however , that they flourish here and in Japan. The wood the smell the taste are known in both countries. Japan longs for community. In that longing it has made mistakes. For one by warring, thinking that was the way in. But it is not.


I had been taken to the camps . When I was a young man I collected scraps of material far into the night.

"Times are hard I said. But, I do have one bolt of cloth, a very fine material here in my store. Come here and I will show you."
This was a man not afraid of the town of Kaunas.

I took one fitting a week for 3 weeks. We talked a good part of the time. He had learned Lithuanian in Tokyo University.
The first Fitting
The ambassador's suit had been made badly, very badly. You could not tell by looking at the suit laid out. But if Ambassador Sugihara had been walking towards you with a trained eye you could tell. And it was done on purpose that way. And you would think what a vengeful tailor to have done so as to make a suit awry like this. Siuvejas. That was his name. A tailor has an obligation if not to his client then to his profession... I mean he professes to his liflong means. Why would he go against it? It is not a badly executed suit by no means but it has been done with an attempt at character assasination. The pant's the sartorius muscle, the tailor's muscle, the measurement done badly or ignored so that a hitch was seen along the inseam. You must know the human anatomy if you are to be a tailor.
I asked myself how can it be? How can a suit be based on spite? A framework built on spite. A tailor and the client stand face to face. They converse and if done properly over a matter of days . They don't necessarily have to be close or reveal their families to each other but they are physically close. The tailor must touch the client. It is a necessary placement of hand and eye and felt reverence reference that must take place. How can one discard that? What render of god given plant, the fig would deny that . Man is an animnal clothed in plant material and cotton is that plant. material. Not the skin of cow, shark, horse or snake. Cotton. Cotton and Linen. Straw , seed amd fiber cloths the human form.

The second Fitting
"Your hands", he said, "Let me see them. No, turn them over . I need the palms." \
Sugihara showed his palms. They were not tender but rough hewn yet of a mildness.
"These aren't the hands of a tailor. Nor are the hands of a diplomat. You, sir, are a gardner."
"Gardner? Honto, des ne?, Really?", he held his fingers to his nose as if the proclamation might have effect in the nostril.
"My father was a tailor now that I think of it. How wonderful it should appear in my hands. "
"Come", Suvejas said, Wash." He pointed to a basin of water.

He brought Shimomura to the back of his shop the stacked bolts of cloth made it muffled and warm.
He put Shimomura's hands on the bolt of cloth. "I should blindfold you and let you pick out your suit. That's the only way to tell if the material wants you."

Let me see your hands. Shimomura said. You are only a boy.
No so. I'm twenty two. A man.
Of course. I meant to say you are young.
I am that.
Shimomura put into his hands a a paper visa.
I'm not a Jew.
You are. We all are. He put it back into his hands.
I work for the Germans so, I'm not a Jew.

When he made the suit up he sewed the paper passport into the lining of the tail to make it unobtrusive. Later Suivejas would retrieve the passport from the suit of the dead man prior to burial. No one would know this only Suivejas. Like an inside joke gone inside to the farthest depths inside.


"But you once told me I hand the hands of a tailor"
"I tell everyone that"

"Your ancestors have sat like tailors , crosslegged. Tell me now if it isn't so."
Sugihara nodded his head. It was the sartoris, the ribbon like sheath of muscle that ran from near outside hip to the inner kneecap.

"I see a man drinking tea," he said.
Are you a seer. What else's up your sleeve.
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He came to america under the name taylor but becoame so confusing because of the millions named as Taylor so he changed it to Siuvejas. He worked in the sweat shop in the lower East side of Manhattan. It was there he gave up forever the idea of making anyone's suit ever again. It was a day to day grinding down of his soul and spirit. He began to believe that it was because of the bad suit he had made. The badly made suit haunted him. so that he gave up on tailoring ever again. It was a character assasination that he had done on Chiune. Then the bolts of cloth episode comes.

He believed nothing could be worse than the Soviets , then the Naziis came. Now the Japanese. He thought of them as exotic creatures, not enough to think about.


Standing so, in the chalk marked suit, Shimomura appeared to be a grand project beginning or approaching its end. Here under the tutelege of the tailor's hand there might be potential of such large design as to hinge on enormity. But no, Siuvejas had seen to it to destroy any sense between the man and the fabric and thereby emphasize, the hideous destroy any hint of a tailor in the process, There were only the simple elegant elements of client, material and tailor. And Siuvejas had seen to it to disassemble the art of needle and thread.

From acres of flax ripening in the sun , to their harvest , to the maceration at some factory, the smell of grass , down to now this bolt of cloth before him, and further now the needle and thread , needle and thread. A straight line as smooth as the eye could make it.

clyde needs only the image.

The third Fitting

He came out from the curtained dressing room with his half finished suit draped on him. The material he had chosen was marked with chaulk, dotted lines here and there, along the breastline, the inseam, the collar. The chaulk made its outline of Shimomura within the fabric. Suivejas was on a ladder looking for a bolt of black cloth with which to continue the suit. He saw Shimomura from above. Taken by surprise Siuvejas could see what it was he had to do. He remembered his family viewed from the top of the stairs. HE knew he would set the Germans against the Japanese. They would quarrel. Figt amongst themselves. The instant of separation In the scheme of things , justice. For a long time he had trouble figuring out between what he wanted and what God wanted for him. What he desired was it really from God? Or was he deluding himself into believing a wish he had? And now this opportunity.

He's going to tell you a story of himself, how he had come to America as a teen and worked for the Germans because they believed he had knowledge in sewing their uniforms. They said he had a knack for it and it was cheap in the village of Lithuania. The Nazis had invaded their country. And he'll tell you that too. And he'll tell you of making a suit for the Japanese ambassdor to Lithuania and how he as a tailor turned the Japanese client over to the Germans for getting the Jews out of Lithuania. He will also tell you of how this act in the end was like turning a brother over to the enemy. So for 20 years he would not touch a stitch of thread repenting what he had done although Shimomura knew nothing of it. They met in another country, a Czech country, Baltic.

The paper passport sat in the drawer of the desk in Siuvejas house. It was a single sheet of paper. He was not a Jew but he had kept it since WWII. It was faded and bugs had nibbled its edges away.

He had not wanted to be a tailor. He had no liking for it. He thought it lowly and time consuming. Although he returned to it again and again as if he or it could not be without the other. He wasnted to play music and tailoring did not encompass such a thing as music.