The Best Intentions by Ingmar Bergman Read Free Book Online

and purehearted and tenderhearted and loving; there’s no limit to it.
    Henrik: But that sounds good. All of it? Or?
    Carl: You see, my boy, she possesses a splinter of glass, a sharp splinter that cuts. ( Laughs .) Now I’ve terrified you all right!
    Henrik: I don’t understand what you mean.
    Carl: Nor is it something you can understand just like that. But I know her. I recognize her.
    Henrik: That sounds like a more sophisticated kind of literature.
    Carl: Of course, of course.
    Henrik: Let’s go, shall we? It’s raining quite hard now.
    Carl: You can share my umbrella. Since I have a markedly tragic view of the ways of the world, I always carry an umbrella. Whether I use itlater on or not is my own free choice. It’s my shrewd way of combating determinism and deceiving chance.
    Henrik ( smiles ): For obvious reasons, I can’t share your . . .
    Carl: . . . view. I have no opinions, but I chatter. Do you know what, Henrik? I think Miss Frida would be an extraordinarily splendid minister’s wife.
    Henrik does not reply to that. He is, quite simply, rendered speechless.

    The term has ended and Henrik goes home.
    It’s a hot day in mid-June, and the train chugs through the summer countryside, making a lengthy stop at each station. Silence, the buzz of flies. Chestnuts in flower reach out toward the closed windows of the compartment. No one is in sight, either at the stations or on board the train. Then on it chugs, first through the pine forest and then along the coast. It takes all day to travel by passenger train from Upsala to Söderhamn.
    Henrik arrives at the west station at twenty-seven minutes past eight in the evening. Mama Alma is waiting at the entrance. He sees her at once — her heavy figure seems to be surrounded by an invisible aura of tearful desolation. Henrik smiles, puts down his suitcase, and embraces his mother.
    She is very fat. Her face is round, her eyes wide open and anxious; she has a small snub nose, large sensitive mouth, and short neck. She is wearing a tight summer coat that is rather shabby and has a button missing. Her black hat with a feather in it has been knocked awry by their embrace. She laughs and cries in utter despair. Henrik makes an effort to return his mother’s show of affection. She smells of dried sweat and is wheezing asthmatically. “Let me look at you, my son. How pale you are, and how thin you are. I suppose you’ve not been bothering about food, of course! How nice of you to come back to your old mother for a few days. Are you really going to have a mustache? I don’t think your mama is all that keen on that mustache. You’ll probably have to shave it off now that you’re to be my darling boy again.”
    Alma Bergman lives in three small rooms at the top of the inner courtyard block on the corner of Norralagatan and Köpmangatan. One of the rooms is Henrik’s and is rented out during the winter months.
    Alma’s bedroom is a very small room, and then there’s the diningroom, connected to a spacious kitchen by a curious serving passage. The apartment is very cluttered, as if its occupants had suddenly had to move from something much bigger and had not had the courage to part with bulky furniture, pictures, and other objects.
    Over everything lies a sticky layer of proud poverty Perplexed abandonment. Hopelessness and tears.
    While Alma produces something to eat, Henrik goes into his boyhood room: The narrow sagging bed. The broken wicker chair with cushions, the rickety desk with its old wounds from the ravages of his penknife, the unmatched chairs. The wardrobe with its cracked mirror, the bookcase of tattered books, the washstand with its illmatched jug and basin, the worn towels. The dirty window, its pelmet slipped from the curtain pole. The pictures of biblical scenes from his childhood (Jesus with the children, the return of the prodigal son). Above the bed is the photograph of his father. A