The Best Intentions

by Ingmar Bergman

  Karin Åkerblom closes the book with a little bang; the clock above the sofa strikes ten, and it’s time to disperse. “Think of all those good intentions,” says Svea, opening her eyes and peering up at the ceiling lamp. ‘All that goodwill that caused so much misery. For it all came to nothing but misery.”

  Karin (benevolently): Have you read the Jerusalem books, Svea? I didn’t know that.

  Svea: My dear Karin, I read them seven years ago. You read a lot when you can’t sleep.

  Karin makes a dismissive gesture and pats Svea on the arm. Like all very healthy people, she doesn’t like hearing about illness.

  Karin: You’ll see, Svea, that new bromide pill will do the trick. Tidy up behind you, won’t you, girls. Off you go! Come on now, Johan Åkerblom, I’ll help you with your shoes. Oscar, you’ll have your breakfast at seven tomorrow morning, so that you can catch the Stockholm train without having to hurry. I’ve told Lisen you’re to have breakfast at seven. Come on now, Johan, where’s your cane? Anna, would you take the tray of drinks and put the brandy away in the cupboard? Anna, Ernst, and Mr. Bergman, you three wait here. I’ll soon be back. We have a few things to talk about. Would you please open the door, Martha? That’s right. Mind the sill, Johan! It really is unnecessarily high, in fact isn’t really necessary at all.

  “Good night”s and “sleep well”s crisscross the room. Martha slips out onto the veranda for a last cigarette. Mother-in-law doesn’t approve of women smoking. Henrik, Anna, and Ernst put away the puzzle, which turned out to be of a castle in Normandy with a bridge and an ox-cart. Oscar hurries out to the outhouse, the lantern fading away into the night. Carl carefully carries both table and lamp up to his attic room — his boyhood room. Gustav gets something to read out of the glass-fronted bookcase. Good night, good night, and another day leaves our time and never comes back. Good night, good night.

  Anna, Henrik, and Ernst remain seated at the table. Mrs. Karin comes in from the hall. She has put on a soft violet-colored peignoir (very correct, with her guest in mind). She sits down at the head of the table and runs her hand over the checkered oilcloth that is always put on after dinner. She makes the same gesture once again, her broad engagement and wedding rings glimmering on the strong hand.

  Karin: Ernst has suggested that you three young people go off on a cycling trip to the farmland at Bäsna. The idea was, as far as I have understood it, that you should stop overnight. By chance, I heard that Elias has brought his people and cattle back unusually early this year. So the buildings are empty. Ernst tells me he has Elias’s and his father’s permission to use the buildings for a few nights. (Pause.) Naturally, I am totally against your plans.

  Ernst: But, Mama dear!

  Karin (raises her hand): Let me finish. I am utterly against your plans, but I am not going to forbid them. (Smiles sarcastically at Henrik.) My children maintain quite forcefully that they are grown up and must take responsibility for themselves. Their parents will have to be satisfied with awaiting the consequences. The alternatives are not that wonderful. The threads between young and old are fragile. We old feel strongly about the link and guard it with constant compromises. The young, on the other hand, find it easy to cut through anything that doesn’t suit them. I am not blaming you, for that is what it’s like. You profit from your boldness and youthful ruthlessness. Our task is to look on. To make a long story short, I intend to be passive up to a certain point. One more thing: I shall always tell you where I stand. But you must always be quite clear about what I think. Any questions?

  Anna: How do you know that you’re always right, Mama? We might just as well be right. Isn’t that so?

  Karin: To some extent you’ve misunderstood my argument. I have experience; you haven’t. I have learned to see our actions in a wider perspective. You go by your own desires. That’s what you do when you’re young. I did, too, when I was your age.

  Anna: Of course, you spoil some of the enjoyment, Mama, by talking in this obscure and threatening way. Actually, it’s rather sophisticated.

  Karin: If you could read my thoughts, if you could see into my heart, as they say, then you would see neither threats nor whatever you called it — sophistication. You would probably find a mindless love for you and your brother. That’s what you would see.

  Anna at once goes over to her mother and embraces her. Karin Åkerblom allows herself to be embraced and pats her daughter lightly on the backside. The young men have been sitting speechless during this conversation, which indeed has been in their mother tongue, but which nevertheless has been incomprehensible to them.

  Ernst: Mama, you really are a game old thing. Don’t you think so, too, Henrik?

  Henrik: To be honest, I don’t really know what’s going on. You’ll have to explain to me.

  Karin (energetically): Exactly. Now let’s all go to bed. I mean, I’m going to bed. I suppose you want to stay up for a little while longer? There’s an opened bottle of red wine in the sideboard. Good night, Ernst, give your mother a kiss. Good night, Anna, make sure you don’t talk too loudly and remember Papa is right next door. He’ll be reading for an hour or two more. Then it must be quiet. Good night, Henrik Bergman. My husband tells me that your conversation this morning made quite an impression.

  Henrik (bows): Good night, Mrs. Åkerblom.

  Karin: Anna, don’t forget to put out the lamp and make sure the veranda doors are locked.

  They set off at about five in the morning. A few hours later, the day has become stifling and windless, a gray mist hiding the sun and the light strong but with no shadows. There is a lot of uphill work, and backpedal braking puts a fierce strain on backs and necks. Things get better after the old ferry crossing. The wind gets up over the heath, and they swim in the cold waters of the deep, swiftly running Boda River. They eat sandwiches and drink fruit juice, feeling better. Ernst starts laughing and complaining bitterly that no one can understand how grown people with their senses intact can, every summer, every year, be so self-destructive as to pack themselves together into the traffic superintendent’s summer residence and, in addition, declare that everything is delightful. “Between ourselves, I have to tell you, my dear Henrik, that the situation has grown worse as my father’s fatigue has increased. Mama feels she has to take on the whole responsibility, and she’s developing a dreadful talent for manipulation and oppression. Now, however, we are about eighteen kilometers away from that dreadful accumulation of misunderstandings, confusions, and surrenders. Here’s to freedom, my children! And then we toast in red currant juice.”

  “It’s easy to be ungrateful,” says Anna. “Mama makes efforts far beyond her strength. Then she doesn’t sleep and is restless. And the more tired she becomes, the more she feels she has to handle the most minute details in the household. Then she complains, and we get angry and unfair.” “Yes, yes,” says Ernst, complementing his sister. “Anna and I keep up a perpetual conversation about Mama. We are most unjust toward her. But we have to take care of our safety valves. Think about Papa in his heyday, and Mama and her consuming efficiency. No wonder the brothers have become what they are. Anna and I have got off lightly.” “I shall certainly keep Henrik away from our family,” says Anna suddenly, then turns scarlet.

  By midday, they have reached their destination and quickly make themselves at home. There is a huddle of smallish buildings on the edge of the forest below the mountain. The grassy slope runs down to a circular pool called Duvtjärn, where there are water lilies along the opposite bank, their stalks disappearing into the brownish black water.

  The cottage consists of a single room that serves as both kitchen and sleeping quarters. The people who usually live there have just gone back to the village for the harvest and threshing, so it’s clean and scrubbed, but full of dead flies. It smells of sour milk and smoky stove. A tangle of wild raspberries leans on the corner of the cottage. The old well with its lever is built over a spring. The water is cold and tastes of iron. Two felled and withered young birches are wilting by t
he porch.

  After they have moved in, Ernst says he is going into the forest to fish for trout and politely asks whether anyone wants to go with him. Neither Anna nor Henrik seem inclined to. Ernst says he understands perfectly well, but adds that he will be back for dinner, and they are to have fresh fish. Then he says good-bye, puts his long fishing rod over his shoulder, and disappears on the path to the mountain.

  Anna and Henrik are left to themselves and each other. The tension in the silence crashes all around them, deafening and confusing and, despite everything, unplanned. They start kissing on their way to the pool, where they are going to look at the water lilies. They turn back to the cottage and lock themselves in and go on kissing. “No,” says Anna. “We can’t be together. It’s impossible, Henrik. I’m bleeding.”

  So they go on kissing and take off some of their clothes. They land on a bed with a bedspread as coarse as a bed of nails, but that is no real obstacle. Then suddenly there is quite a lot of blood, pretty much everywhere. Anna says it hurts, be careful, it hurts. Then she forgets it hurts, and it doesn’t hurt any longer. She no longer cares that blood is all over the place and that the pulse in Henrik’s neck is beating against her lips. She sobs and laughs and holds him tightly. For a few moments this is a pastime — but a decisive one.

  So much becomes decisive when one tries to examine an event after the fact and knows what happens later. An event that also consists of a few loose odds and ends. It means filling in the account with understanding and possible inspiration. Occasionally I can hear their voices, but very faintly. They encourage me, or say dismissively: It wasn’t like that at all. It really didn’t happen like that.

  As far as this episode is concerned, I have heard no comments, either one way or the other. I remember Mother once saying: “Oh, yes, we often went on cycling trips to the farmlands at Bäsna. When we got there, Ernst went off to catch trout. When he came back, he produced a fat eel. I refused to kill it, so we released it into the Duvtjärn and then we fried pork and potatoes for dinner. I remember that.”

  They are now sitting on the jetty, much damaged by the ice, with a scrubbing brush and green soft soap, scrubbing away at the old bedspread, which only reluctantly relinquishes the blood.

  Anna: This spring, we were doing our practical at Sabbatsberg Hospital. My roommate and I ended up in a ward for old men in the last stages of consumption. It was terrible, terrible. So much horror and misery. At first I had to go out and vomit several times a day, and Paula fainted when the doctor showed some poor wretch who had suppurating sores all over his body It was a strange time, you see, almost like a dream. We had to wash the patients when they messed themselves, and we learned to put in catheters both here and there. They were dying like flies all the time. A screen was just pulled round, and sometimes at night you had to sit and hold someone’s hand and just watch while his life simply ran out. I thought I’d never again be the same Anna as I had been, and I was pleased about that. Then I thought about you, Henrik. Do you think the stains have all gone now? No, there’s another one. I thought about you, Henrik. And I thought about us, when we get married. Do you understand what an unbeatable combination you and I will be? You a priest and me a nurse! It’s as if you could see a plan for our life. We’ve come together to accomplish something for other people. You bandage the soul and I the body Isn’t that magnificent! If it weren’t so impossible, I could believe that God had thought it up. What do you think?

  Henrik covers his face with his hands and sits like that for a few moments, far too dazzled by the enthusiastic and loving look in Anna’s eyes.

  Anna: What’s the matter, Henrik?

  Henrik: I don’t think it’s allowed.

  Anna: I don’t understand at all what you mean.

  Henrik: This much joy just cannot be allowed. Some punishment must be on its way.

  Anna: The sun shines after rain. (She stretches out a hand, throws back her head, and is silent for a moment.) A mild wind is blowing. We love each other, and we’re going to live together. We’ll . . . (She takes down the hand and puts it against Henrik’s cheek.) We shall live for each other and be useful to other people. And our children shall be as clear-minded as we are.

  Henrik: You must stop now. I think there’s a secret cosmic envy that punishes people who talk like that.

  Anna: Then I challenge that cosmic envy to a duel, and I promise you I know who’ll win! Now let’s hang up this bedspread and let it dry in the sun. Then our sin will be obliterated.

  It has been said and decided from the start that Henrik’s visit would end on Thursday the twenty-second of August. On Wednesday afternoon, Henrik is sitting in Ernst’s room at the brown escritoire, trying to go through his examination sermon. The house is silent and empty, the family gone to the hill with the grand view with some guests who had arrived from the capital in their own automobile. The superintendent of traffic is slumbering in his chair on the veranda. Siri and Lisen are sitting on the bench overlooking the sunset, preparing chanterelles from a basket between them.

  As if by chance, Karin Åkerblom has stayed behind and not gone on the outing, pleading a slight cold. As if by chance, she knocks on her youngest son’s door and, without waiting for an answer, looks in. Henrik at once rises to his feet. Mrs. Karin apologizes and says she has no wish to disturb him, but just wants to know whether Ernst has left his cardigan at home, so that she can mend it, for there is a large hole in the elbow. As if by chance, she comes into the room and looks around with two swift glances. She has her ingeniously fitted-out mending bag over her arm. She smiles benevolently at Henrik and asks if she is by any chance disturbing him. Henrik bows and tells her that she is not disturbing him in the slightest.

  “Then may I ask your assistance, Mr. Bergman?” she says, swiftly digging out a skein of thick wool and threading it over Henrik’s outstretched hands. She suggests that they sit down opposite each other by the open window. The creeper climbing all the way up to the eaves has begun to turn red, and a faintly acrid scent of autumn is coming from the marigolds in the beds below. But it is still summer weather, and a summer wind is blowing across the river, which is glittering in the bright afternoon light.

  If Henrik had known anything about Mrs. Karin Åkerblom, that knowledge would have warned him. He now tumbles headlong into all the pitfalls and walks innocently into all the traps. Her ability to get people to confess has been testified to. She is now sitting there with a quiet smile and has tied Henrik’s hands together with blue wool. The ball is being nimbly wound up.

  Karin: Are you going back home to Söderhamn and your mother tomorrow, Mr.Bergman?

  Henrik: I’ll probably be going straight to Upsala.

  Karin: But the term doesn’t start for a while, does it?

  Henrik: I have to find a room and get myself settled. I’m also retaking church history.

  Karin: Oh, so you’ve had your exam in church history, have you? That’s Professor Sundelius, isn’t it?

  Henrik: Yes. It didn’t go too well.

  Karin: Professor Sundelius is a real tormentor of students. I remember him as a young man. He used to come to our home. He was a handsome youth, but terribly self-important. Then he married into money and a big stone house and made a career in liberal politics. People say he’ll be a cabinet minister, from what I can make out.

  Karin Åkerblom looks out the window and seems to be thinking. Then there’s a tangle in the wool, and she leans forward to separate the threads.

  Karin: Have you enjoyed your stay here with us, Mr. Bergman?

  Henrik: Very much, thank you. Ernst is a very good friend.

  Karin: Ernst is a fine boy. Johan and I are immensely proud of him. We try to keep our enthusiasm in check. The danger is that we might otherwise inhibit him with our expectations.

  Henrik: I don’t think Ernst seems oppressed. He’s an unusually free person. In fact, he’s the only truly free person I know.

  Karin: I’m glad to hear you say so, Mr. Bergman.

>   Henrik: I’m very fond of him. He’s like a brother to me.

  Karin: I think Ernst is also happy that you’re friends. He’s said that many a time.

  Henrik: You were kind enough to ask me, Mrs. Åkerblom, whether I had enjoyed my stay. Naturally I replied that I had, very much so. But that’s not entirely true. I have been frightened and tense.

  Karin: Frightened? But my dear boy, why frightened?

  Henrik: The Åkerblom family is an alien world to me. Although my mother took great trouble with my upbringing.

  Karin: But my dear boy! Has it been so difficult?

  Henrik: Most of it would have been bearable, if only I hadn’t been so aware of the criticism.

  Henrik: The family is critical.I am weighed on the scales and found wanting.

  Karin (laughs): Now, listen, Mr. Bergman! All families are like that. We’re certainly no worse than any other. And you know, Mr. Bergman, you have two very competent and devoted defenders.

  If this were a conventional novel, now would be the time to describe what Mrs. Karin is thinking and perhaps most of all Henrik’s fluttering emotions when faced with Mrs. Karin’s clear looks. Far too late, Henrik has realized that the trap door has slammed behind him. His chances of making a case for himself are extremely limited.