Vol. VI No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

THE BERMONDSEY BOOK
forests were darkening and dissolving into the grey twilight; the glitter
faded from the water, immeasurable shadows fell from the firs silhouetted
against the sunset. Only here and there the stumps and stones
still reddened on the summits of the hills and in the clearings. From
these glimmering points tiny and fugitive rays were reflected, dropping
into the abyssmal voids that are created between objects by an imperfect
darkness j they vibrated in the voids, were broken, trembled for the
twinkling of an eye and then went out—went out one after another.
The trees and bushes lost their density, 'their convexity, their natural
colours, and emerged from the grey expanse only as flattish shapes
with freakish outlines and of a sombre black.
In the valley a dense mist was already settling, and a penetrating
cold crept up. The twilight came on in invisible billows, slipping over
the sides of the hills, drawing into itself the yellow hues of the stubble
lands, the fallen trees, the mounds, and the rocks.
To meet the waves of the dusk, from the marshes arose other
waves, whitish, translucent, hardly perceptible, crawling in streamers,
winding in skeins around the vegetation, trembling and ruffling above
the surface of the water. A cold breath of dampness kneaded them,
sent them roving along the bottom of the valley, stretched them over
the levels like a piece of coarse sacking.
"The mist is rising," muttered Valek's wife.
It was the moment of gloaming when all visible forms seem to
be disintegrating into dust and nothingness, when a grey emptiness
floods over the surface of the ground, and an unapprehended canker of
sorrow peers into the eyes and constricts the heart. Valek's wife was
overcome with fear. Her hair bristled on her head and a shudder
passed over her. The mists came on like living bodies, crawling towards
her steadily, running up from behind, drawing back, lurking and then
again pressing forward more impetuously in a compact rank. Finally
they lay clammy hands upon her, soaking into her body to the very
bones, clutching at the throat and fumbling at her breasts. Then she
remembered her child. She had not seen her since noon; she was
sleeping alone in the locked-up hut, in a linden cradle suspended from
the cross-beam by birchen poles. For certain she was crying there,
whimpering and sobbing. The mother heard that singular weeping, as
mournful as the puling of kites in the wilderness. It sounded in her
ears, seemed to be torturing just one spot in her brain, fretted at her
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