Ingmar Bergman Unfinished Script “Wheat and Oranges” —Excerpt”
“Olaf, your hand is shaking.”
“It is this cup of tea, Sven. It is this cup of tea.”
“Is the tea not to your liking?”
“It is the weight of the tea, Sven. Tea — it is heavy with memories. Days gone by. People who we will never see again. Snow that falls endlessly behind a fogged window.”
“I understand. I once ate an orange that reminded me of the days after The War.”
“Tea is only truly understood with age. We steep in our years, our failures, our brief glimpses of a World that does not exist. There was a woman, once: I remember. She had hair like harvest wheat.”
“Was it not to be, Olaf? You and this women with the hair of wheat?”
“Even now, the bittersweet is exquisite. I stood on the train platform and watched her leave to Russia. She had one suitcase. All of her life, in one suitcase. I was not in that suitcase: I was no longer part of her life.”
“That is bittersweet, Olaf.”
“I still have a lock of her harvest wheat hair. Her smell is long gone. It is just dead hair, now. It means nothing, yet I cannot bear to part with it.”
“Wheat makes me think of Death. Wheat and oranges.”
“Sven, we have so much in common, yet we will always be separated by the distance of the cold Universe. The more I understand you, the closer I am to dying.”
“The Universe: it has a Cruel Neutrality, Olaf.”
“Yes it does, Sven. Excuse me: I think I shall drink the rest of my tea in meaningful silence.”
“I understand, Olaf. I shall go take a walk in the snow through the barren trees. Perhaps I will lose my way. Perhaps I will freeze to death, not to be found until Spring.”
“If there is to be a Spring, Olaf: if there is to be a Spring…”
I am Laslo.
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