THE TALE OF THE MILL OWNER 

by Ann Rabinowitz

This story was written after my roots trip in 2004 where I visited the shtetl and mill located in Kupiskis, Lithuania.  I was given the picture of the mill owner by the present owner and from there, the plot only deviates slightly from the actual reality.  Basically, it is a product of the memories of those who were descended or lived in the shtetl of Kupiskis as well as the actual records of the town.

He had a full head of wavy dark hair which flowed thickly from his broad and intelligent forehead. He had kind and gentle eyes, the eyes of someone you could trust, someone you would instinctively like. He was a wealthy man by the standards of his day and he did not flaunt this wealth, but quietly put it to work in the community. He liked that he could give and not always be known. His anonymity satisfied him.

The church chandelier was one of his major gifts to the community, a 3-tiered brightly lit crystal beauty, which hung with great dignity in the main apse of the church. When one prayed, it lit the whole of the interior with a rich and mellow glow.

The poor benefited from his largesse and there wasn't a person in the community that did not know that they could count on him in time of need. But there were those who were jealous of him, petty people, at best. Those who had failed at all they did or those who saw his dignity, integrity and intelligence and hated him for those things. And there were those who knew he was a Jew and hated him for this alone.

Women felt drawn to him; he exuded a warm and feral feeling which transmitted itself to them directly. However, he had long since married someone of his own kind, an arranged marriage, with a young woman who did not have great beauty, but had wealth. She was dignified and respectable and made a good companion and spouse for a man of his means.

They lived in harmony for many years, but there were no children and it became evident that there never would be any. The mill owner was crushed, as he had wanted children to enhance his life and give it a deeper meaning. Children could take on the responsibilities of the commercial empire he was building, could enjoy the fruits of his labor, and, in the end, could love and care for he and his wife in their old age.

His siblings had children galore, but for him there would be no one. Eventually, he and his wife grew distant, not knowing who was to blame for the barrenness in their lives. He traveled abroad more often than before, visiting commercial interests, making deposits in his Swiss Bank, pausing at well-known spas such as Baden Baden to relax and meet others like himself, particularly the beautiful women who frequented them. Their beauty intrigued him and sated the emotion he often felt, the longing for what was never to be.

He would return home, finding the emptiness agonizing, and the stiff and unbending quality of his wife becoming more evident as the years went by. They spoke infrequently now, mostly to settle household matters. They were seen together at family gatherings, he well-dressed and prosperous, and she looking sad and apart. One photo showed them standing in front of his first car, a wonderful contraption, lovingly cared for, the very first such vehicle in their town. It allowed him to escape, to drive far distances, to remove himself from any reminder of the lack of family and children in their home.

As he walked about his community, he began to find the devotion and affection he did not have at home. He did much to alleviate poverty, to improve the lot of his fellow man. His mill now provided the first electrical power to the community and this was an important step towards modernizing his town. There were many in the town that wished him well and depended on him. He gained the reputation of a millionaire with a heart.

In his travels about the community, he often saw a young woman, beautiful and young, dazzling in the glory of her youth, who was married to a slightly older man. The husband had left the community to find work in South Africa as many often did in those days of turmoil. She worked hard to support herself in his absence, but one could see that she missed having someone to succor her, to comfort her, and to take on all of the everyday miseries that could occur to someone in their poor community.

Very often, he would stop by her store, buy something from her and chat for a moment. These fragments of time began to mean more to him each day as he would pass her on his way to and from the mill. She, in turn, began to enjoy his presence and innocent conversation. She was lonely and he was a handsome and debonair fellow. She began to wear her nicest clothing when she knew he would be stopping, she would primp and try to look her best.

The town was small and people noticed that the mill owner was stopping rather frequently at the shop of the woman. This situation occasioned much discussion and the townsfolk whispered their suspicions, one to the other. What they whispered grew in dimensions as it got passed from one to the other until the two innocent parties were imagined by their townsfolk to be engaged in a raging love affair.

The whispers began to have a life of their own and they were eventually put on paper, in letters to family and friends who had left the town and gone to South Africa. This was a major happening in a town of their size, something new and diverting from the monotony of everyday life.

Those people who had hated the mill owner before now saw an opportunity to do him harm. One such person wrote to the husband of the woman, told him of the whispers about his wife and the mill owner. He begged him to return and collect his wife and free her from this bad influence.

Originally, the husband had left the town as he knew that a War was coming and they had to find a way to support themselves elsewhere. He worried about the wife he had left behind, the young and beautiful woman, he had left alone. There had been nothing he could do, as it was imperative that he leave and find a life in Africa to support them. He had planned to bring her out in a year or two when he had enough money saved.

This news about his wife hurt him to the bone and, at first, he found it hard to believe that this set of circumstances had taken place and that his pure and pious young wife would do such a thing. He hated the mill owner for his part in what he thought was the seduction of his wife.

His jealousy began to turn him into a sour and angry man. This would not have surprised those who knew him well, as he was a person who was wont to believe the worst of mankind. He took things at face value, never plummeting to the depths of life.

Therefore, he did not consider that the rumors were false, and he began his return home, the long journey ahead not a deterrent as he thought of his wife in the arms of the mill owner. He wrote to his wife and told her he was coming to get her, not mentioning the reason. He would speak to her when he arrived and set things straight.

The wife, surprised by this turn of events, saw that her husband was finally returning home after so long an absence. She thought of his return and realized that she did not yearn for it as she had in the past, for those many years that he had been away from her.

Despite his absence, she had been a constant and faithful wife to him, but now, suddenly, her heart was somewhere else. She felt something for someone else. What was she to do?

The mill owner heard of the husband’s imminent return and he felt a sadness and regret. His blissful daily interludes were coming to an end, the special moments he spent during the day visiting with the woman would be curtailed and they would meet no more. His life would return to the humdrum emptiness of the past. He thought of this as he walked along the road towards the woman’s shop, intent on seeing his future, his loneliness, unravel before him.

Opening the shop door, he realized it was closing time. The woman was gathering her things to end her daily toil and go upstairs to her home for her nightly meal. The last patron had departed and they were alone, alone at long last. The mill owner felt the opportunity had come to speak his mind, to tell the woman of his feelings for her, at least, once before they parted forever.

As he began, the woman came from behind the counter and closed the shutters on the windows, locked the door, and moved silently beside him. She took his hand and led him upstairs to her living quarters. She parted from him momentarily and went to the fire and stoked it hot and fiery to keep them warm.

 Later, when their moments of closeness were over, they sat in front of the fire and debated what to do. They could not bear to part, but the woman’s husband was on his way. The mill owner could not leave his wife of many years, what would she do? The scandal of their liaison would destroy the fiber of the community, would destroy whatever good the mill owner had ever done. Where could they live together with their shame? Divorce was anathema then. They would be outcasts.

The mill owner wanted to be able to tell her that they could leave together, could leave that day, could escape what he knew might be coming in the future, but he could not find it in his makeup to do that. He could not wish on her a life of shame and degradation, shunned by the community for their liaison.

The woman cried bitterly, for she knew that she loved the mill owner, now, more than ever. She also knew that she would accept the return of her husband without any qualms, would go with him where he wanted. There was nothing else to do.

Several weeks passed and the husband finally returned home. His wife and the mill owner had parted finally and no longer saw each other. By then, too, the whispers had subsided and the scandal mongers now had other things to take up their attention. A War was coming and much evil was on the way to their community. People were packing and leaving in haste, ready to risk everything to get away.

The husband saw his wife and knew she was his once again. He was still angry at the rumors that had brought him back. He felt that they were untrue now and he settled into his old domestic routine. He could not leave her again and did not have the funds to take her with him, if he did. They were stuck, his years away from home of no use now, his money was gone, used on his fare back home. They would have to meet their fate together whatever it was.

As the War overtook the town, the Jews of the place were taken and summarily killed by their neighbors, buried unceremoniously, without fanfare or tombstone, the men first and then the women and children. They lay in deep pits in what was called an atheists’ cemetery.

The mill owner had been out of town at a nearby spa when all this had transpired. Upon returning to the town, he found that his faithful wife had been killed and his community had been totally decimated. The ravaging wolves of hate lurked everywhere and there appeared to be nowhere to hide.

His life in tatters, he had fled to a neighboring village where he was hidden by a peasant who knew him well and who was eager for his money. He remained there unharmed until his money ran out. He was then dragged from the peasant’s cottage back into the town and was shot ignominiously by the side of the road and left to die.

In those last moments, he thought of his poor wife who had died without him by her side, of his life of good deeds in the community, the years he had done his best for all, and he remembered too the highlight of his life, the brief tender moments with the woman, now gone as well, buried deep in the soil of the atheists’ cemetery, alone. His tears ran down his face and mingled with the blood around him until he breathed no more.

Years later, at the end of the War, those who had survived came back to the town, bent on finding who had bested the brutality of those times. The woman came too as she had managed to survive the massacre in the town, had fled into the forest, helped by kind peasants, since she was, by then, pregnant. A small child walked beside her now, tiny, in tattered clothing, but alive and well.

The woman asked in the town what had happened to her landsleit, to her family, to her friends. Then, she asked about the mill owner. They told her the sorry tale of his death and his burial in the atheists’ cemetery afterwards.

She was heartbroken, and saw around her the loss his death had caused. The town seemed, somehow, more shabby and smaller, without his presence. He had brought a special energy and magic to the shtetl. She remembered his slow deliberate masterful stride as he walked through town, noting all around him, looking at what needed to be done, to be taken care of, to make things run properly.

There would be others who would take his place, but they would not have the heart he had to bear the burdens of the town so lightly on his shoulders, to care about each and every person no matter what their station. She turned then and walked towards the mill where the miller had made his mark.

 Reaching the mill, she wandered inside the large gloomy interior, the noise of the engines and the dirt of the work still there. She pulled from her pocket a small photograph, one he had given her, and she placed it quietly behind one of the thick wooden beams at the back of the mill. He would be there forever now she thought; it would be his mill no matter who had stolen it from him.

 As she walked out into the bright sunlight, her hand closed gently over her child’s small hand and she walked purposefully towards the atheist’s cemetery. She picked a single flower from the field nearby and placed it upon the monument that had been erected there in the cemetery to commemorate those who had been killed so ruthlessly.

The tears flowed, for her husband and family, her friends, and for her life that had been so horribly torn apart. As she stood there in silence, she thought too of the mill owner and knew that he would have been contented that she had come . . . that beside her stood a small remnant of him that still lived, a remnant that was growing quickly every day. It was the boy with the shock of dark hair which curled and tumbled about his tiny face.

The years passed and one day the child grew up, a tall and upright man, with much of his father’s kind and sensitive ways about him. He wondered about his father and, in doing so, he made plans to return to his father’s birthplace where he had been killed so brutally. Later, he walked in his father’s footsteps, saw with his own eyes what his father had wrought in the town, and finally came to the now decrepit mill, the mostly bare bricks with the paint peeling and long gone.

He stood there waiting, waiting for his father to emerge perhaps, his shadow on the dirt and gravel of the yard, the iron implements rusted and broken, in his path. However, the only person who came out to greet him was a large bulky man, strong and taciturn, his arms bulging from his rough shirt, his face burned red from the summer sun, the new owner of the mill.

The mill owner’s son spoke to the man and told him who his father was. The man led him inside and showed him the interior of the mill, not changed radically from his father’s time, the floor dirt-packed still, the implements scattered helter-skelter on the floor, and the big engine which drove the mill, large and caked with grease.

At one point, the man stopped his tour and went deep into the mill, to a thick wooden beam, and he pulled out a small photograph which had been hidden behind it. He showed it to the mill owner’s son. “Here is your father”, he said, I found this when I took over the mill”.

It seemed then that the mill owner’s son suddenly remembered, remembered that day long ago, misted in the veils of his memory, the moment when his own dear mother had placed the photograph there. Yes, it was the very one. He handled it lovingly, careful not to tear the edges or to crease it. Reluctantly, he returned it to the man to put, yet again, behind the beam as the man required that from him. The photograph belonged to the mill. It would stay there in perpetuity, a token of his father, until the mill was no more.

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 Originally posted to FB JG Portal August 16, 2015.

 Born in Manchester, England, genealogist Ann Rabinowitz is a resident of South Florida and has been involved in genealogical pursuits since the age of ten. A prolific writer, her articles have been published on the JewishGen Blog, in numerous Jewish genealogy journals, on Facebook, and in various newspapers.