Ingmar Bergman Unfinished Script “Wheat and Oranges” —Excerpt”
“Olaf, I am afraid. Afraid I will never have a family to continue my family name.”
“It is a bowl of soup, Sven. Lineage is a bowl of pitiful radish soup.”
“But Olaf, my name has been through countless generations, through wars and strife and birth and tears, only to come to me to die an unmourned death, in a grave none shall ever visit.”
“Sven, everything ends. Someone will always leave the orange orchard to wither and die, untended.”
That certainly is bleak, Olaf.”
The Universe is bleak, Sven: the only heat we ever truly feel is that of our own house consumed in fire, lit by our own match.”
“I like to think man can reach for more than that, Olaf.”
“Reach for what, Sven? Some thin feeble reed of immortality? We are wheat, Sven, and the scythe waits for us all.”
“So Olaf, there is only death? Do you not want someone to mourn your passing?”
“I mourn the loss of an orange, dear Sven, not a fellow man.”
“There is more to life than oranges, Olaf.”
“I can see how a foolish man might believe that, my dear Sven. The simple orange is my only evidence of the possible existence of God.”
“What about man himself? Do you not believe our very being is the handiwork of God?”
“If that is true, Sven, then He only created us to give reason to Death. And radishes.”
“You have given me much to think about, Olaf. Perhaps I shall wander out into the snowy forest and lose my way, beneath an uncaring sky.”
“Keep a radish in your pocket, Sven: it will delay the wolves…”
I am Laslo.
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