INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘FANNY AND ALEXANDER’ “How is it one becomes second rate?”

© 2019 by James Clark

  What we see, right at the beginning of this characteristically amazing film, is a one-of-a-kind head’s up: “Not For Pleasure Alone.” That is to serve as an irony about the standard disclaimer that anything but mainstream diversion (“pleasure alone”) would be coming from opinions not held by the suits. There is, in our film today, Fanny and Alexander (1982), whereby a Jewish magician (in Sweden, at the beginning of the twentieth century) rescues two children from the clutches of savage villainy, by way of wailing and making fists, to an effect of the eponymous figures transporting from a chest on a first floor to a room on the second floor. And, after the display to the suspicious jailor, back they come to the chest and away they go, out the door, supposedly (to the meany) just an empty chest purchased by an antiquarian. Since when did Bergman go in for such deus ex machina naivete? Actually, never. The “spring,” in The Virgin Spring (1960), has been framed as self-delusion, while other eyes are not fooled. Here, however, within a torrent of complex, sensual conflict, that little stunt marks the matter as being peculiarly assailed by pleasure merchants and their devotees. Hollywood/ Disney deliberately polluting any rare, mature effort as to a rich and devastating line of creative crisis.

Our task, then, is to set in relief the thoroughgoing (and “punishing”) vectors which Bergman had, to that point, masterfully deployed in many previous films, in order to glean this, more recent, discovery. We begin, therefore, with the opening mis-en-scene, coming to us as branded by the phrase, “Not for Pleasure Alone.” In close-up, a young boy manipulates a toy theater (with a castle back drop) in the sense of an addition to a composition. The figure, now in question, is a woman in finery, perhaps a queen. The way the boy deposits his toy reminds us of a move on a chess board. His quizzical visage goes on to establish a little hedgerow, or a little forest, like the forest which Jof and Marie (in the film, The Seventh Seal [1957]) negotiated with much stress and courage, with madness and a cataclysm all around. Jof, a travelling minstrel/ dancer/ circus clown in the 12^th century, had dedicated to his baby boy the rare essence of  becoming an acrobatic genius and a juggler putting forth an “impossible” trick. The couples’ odyssey would be in stark contrast to the knight, Block, riveted to a chess game, supposedly with Death itself, where the prize of winning would be entering “Pleasure Alone,” in heaven—the reward of the moguls like Block and like those assertive Hollywood types who would settle only for maudlin payoffs, pleasure alone!

The boy in the midst of this whimsy, namely, Alexander, does not amount to much in the context of a fascinating subversiveness. (He joins, therefore, the clueless boy in the firestorm that was The Silence [1963]; and the clueless boy in the firestorm that was Persona [1967].) But he does have a (slightly), one and only, golden moment right after he’s shown us his (incendiary) toys. Rousing himself from the miniatures, Alexander meanders amidst a veritable palace—not simply opulent but savvy, about a reboot of Art Nouveau tableaus, their floral motifs being restrained and calling out appropriate mystery and passion. Seemingly frightened (and definitely not impassioned), he calls out to his sister and his mother; and silence prevails. Reaching the domain of his grandmother, Helena, the matriarch of an extensive and influential family, in a small Swedish city, and finding the area apparently deserted (he had called out the names of a couple of servants), he passes amidst a carefully tended floral indoor garden. (The link to the Nouveau initiative up in the air.) Falling asleep under a table, on waking  he imagines a nude female sculpture to have lifted her arm. Soon after, Helena walks by, having found a couple of books she would be interested in, though throughout, we see no sustained reading on her part. Suddenly, she turns and addresses an Alexander she knew all along to be there. “How are things?” is her less than effusive welcome. Then she continues on her way. But pivoting again, she asks, “Would you like to play cards before dinner?” He sheepishly crawls out of his hiding place, only to hide behind a chair.

That equivocal, “No,” to a game of cards derives its unintentional stature from circumstances within the Bank of Bergman, particularly his Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), where a dowager/ matriarch, without a family to speak of, plays cards—but only Solitaire. The distance between Helena and the far sterner and brighter and more loving dowager will, thereby, become a test for the grandmother and her whole clan here.

Though the jury is out, concerning where the quite ravishing Art Nouveau décor originated, we can avail ourselves of one of those marvelous theatrical discourses of our guide, which manage to take the pulse of a protagonist where it actually impacts upon the cosmos itself. Near the end of this advisedly long, complex and most notable film, Gustov, one of Helena’s sons, describes his and his kins’ rationale for well-being, on the occasion of a relative and her twin babies and two other children—one being Alexander—returning to the fold. We take this rather eccentric step in order to encounter that tangle of a narrative becoming  transparent as part of an effete and generally oblivious massacre. “My dear, dear friends. I am more moved than I can say. My wisdom is simple. There are those who despise it, but I don’t give a damn… Therefore, consequently, we Ekdahls have not come into the world to see through it. Never think of that. We are not equipped for such excursions. We might just as well ignore the big things. We must live in the little world, extend our arms to the children… We will be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it. Suddenly death strikes, the abyss opens. Suddenly the storm howls, and disaster is upon us. All that, we know. But let us not think of this unpleasantness. We Ekdahls love our subterfuges. Rob a man of his subterfuges and he goes mad, begins lashing out. Damn it all, people must be intelligible. Otherwise we don’t dare to love them or speak ill of them. We must be able to grasp the world and reality, so we can complain of their monotony with a clear conscience. [Rushing to the part of the enormous table where theater artists sit] Don’t be sad, dear splendid artists. Actors and actresses, we need you all the same. It is you who must give us our supernatural shivers, or, better yet, our innermost diversions. The world is a den of thieves and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. [This latter point having been enunciated by Manda, early on, in The Magician (1958), only to recant its significance by the end of that film.] The poison affects us all. We Ekdahls, and everyone else. No one escapes, not even Helena Viktoria or little Aurora [the names of the returning relative’s babies]. So it shall be. Therefore, let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful, to take pleasure in the little world. Good food, gentle smiles, fruit trees in bloom, waltzes… My dear friends, I’m only talking… The sentimental rambling of an old man. I don’t care…”

He rounds out his apologia for the “not at all shameful” choice of “the little world,” by sure-fire, ace-in-the-hole, motherhood, in the form of lifting to his arms one of the babies-of-the-hour, and emoting (in Hollywood style), “It’s tangible, yet immeasurable.” There is an antithesis to all this, but it must wait until this edition of Bergman’s putting into play the means and costs of “Pleasure Alone” has been detailed as never before. Truth to tell, this film, largely seen as a fortification of family, modest striving and a veritable Charles Dickens charm-fest, is an anatomy of the murder of love and its lucidity. The first major moment is Christmas , and, to be sure, Dickens and his sense of the larger-than-life rules the roost (in the same way Hollywood moguls ruled, and continue to rule, the roost). The Christmas Eve and Christmas Day obligations allow us to more fully comprehend the opulence of this family (a profit centre tucked away in a rather remote corner of Sweden). Amidst revelations of Helena’s three middle-aged sons and their wives and children, the one that goes through the roof might very well seem to be trivial. In addition to a monumental edifice, comprising all of the above in vast and decorative domains—a full-scale, royal style (bourgeois)  castle—there is an abutment of a lavish theater and repertory company, now in the hands of the oldest son, Oscar (that latter name, one of so many ironies). Every Christmas Eve, there is a performance of the birth of Jesus. And after the show, Oscar would be on the spot to regale the celebrants with a sort of state of the union address. On this night, the Artistic Director (also being a principal actor) sees fit to reflect upon his discipline in a rather demanding way, in view of an audience intent on fun. “My dear friends… For 22 years, in the capacity of the theater manager, I’ve stood here and made a speech, without really having any talent for this sort of thing. Especially if you think of my father, who was brilliant at speeches [close-up of the speaker and his strained and haggard face]. My only talent, if you can call it that, is that I love this little world [a little world very different from Gustov’s little world], inside the thick walls of this playhouse. And I’m fond of the people who work in this little world. Outside is a big world, and sometimes the little world succeeds in reflecting [crucially participating in] the big one, so that we understand it better. Or [diplomatically changing the subject], perhaps we give the people who come here a chance to forget [Gustov’s theme] a while for a few short moments. Our theater is a little room of orderliness, routine, care and love [he’s near to tears]. I don’t know why I feel so comically solemn this evening…” Cutting to the Disney juggler, Isak [a very different Isak from the protagonist of Wild Strawberries (1957)], on the night of Oscar’s last address, we find the former en route to Helena—they being old flames (soulmates, indeed), in supplement to her ardent, now defunct, husband who, like the previous Isak, was regarded, by a fiancé, about to ditch him, inasmuch as he was at “such a terribly high level.” (Those long-term squeezes park there, as supposed paragons of how civilized and modern a romantic triangle can be. “Sounds good to me,” say the viewers, flashing their fealty to Gustov.) Helena, on this night, like many Christmas Eves with the magician, finds herself strangely weighted down by late-comers to her post-Nativity party, and out of sorts in feeling old. But she brightens up in receiving from him the Christmas present of a lovely broach. It is at this juncture that the San Andrea Fault does its thing. “I expect Oscar is making a long, dull speech…”

Just as Helena would have regarded her husband, when running the theater on principles of “brilliance,” to be a bore, she, though once being an actress in his troupe, was prone to maintain that producing babies was her greatest pleasure. (“I loved having a big belly!”) Emilie, Oscar’s wife, soon after his death a few weeks after Christmas, would maintain, to the Lutheran bishop of the town, whom she’s happy to marry, “I’ve never cared for anything seriously [so much for Oscar’s marriage]. I’ve sometime wondered if there wasn’t something very wrong with my feelings [more like it]. I couldn’t understand why nothing really hurt… why I never felt really happy [How hard did she—acrobatic-style—try to snap out of it? Oscar had given it a shot.] I knew now that the crucial moment has come. I know that we’ll hate each other, but I’m not afraid [The hate, her experience with Oscar having come to pass, becoming axiomatic]. I also know that we will make each other happy [Now what in the world could elicit cogent love—acrobatics and juggling—on the basis of hate, ‘like a mad dog’?] And I sometimes weep from fear, because time is so short, the days pass so quickly, and nothing lasts forever [Get fearless. Get fearless in that company?]. Kiss me now, and hold me in your arms as only you can.” The melodramatic tenor, also a staple to unheroic Helena, eclipses what wayward resolve there is to be found in Emilie’s enlistment to the boot camp. She, thinking that rigid, ascetic practices would lead to valid sensibility, would soon reap horror and death, in exchange for turning her back—somewhat like Helena—against what seemed to be ridiculous and dispensable.

Though a plum-pudding of the rich subterfuges of the Ekdahls flames at the Yuletide and subsequently, I think the earthquake of Emilie and her guru should flame out first for us, as an instance of a world-historical juggernaut, to be followed by the intimate and actually more dominant pathology of the “little world.” Alexander, never finding much traction, even when his tightly imaginative father was alive, announced to his teacher, after the death and the hovering of a holy man, that his mother had sold him to a travelling circus which he will join at the end of the semester, when he will begin to train as an acrobat and equestrian, along with a young gypsy named, Tamara. This entirely valid motive for the sake of seriousness is treated by the now doubled, deranged trouble shooters as a major crime. “Go to your mother and ask for her forgiveness.” There ensues a solemn cross-examination by the flinty and physically well-endowed, managerial presence (put to shame by the self-critical matinee idol-preacher in the film, Winter Light [1960])—Emilie, of the exceptional bones, having hopscotched over ordinary Oscar, in addition to her self-improvement binge.) The bishop’s name is Vergerus; another Vergerus, in the film, The Magician, though a medical doctor, mirrors the Inquisition here, in hatred of the “ineffable”—religion (and its “good deeds”) and science, forming an alliance of more or less violence toward fathoming a cosmos not smiling upon classical rational ultimacy. Dragged over the coals for lying, Alexander, defining his crime as, “not wanting to see the truth,” tells the arbiter of truth, “I promise not to do it again.” For his victory lap, the divine trots out, “The matter is resolved, never to come again. Imagination is a splendid thing, a mighty force, a gift from God. It’s held in trust for us by the greatest artists, writers and musicians” [certified to not mess with the ineffable, which Alexander finds to be attractive]. Vergerus convenes a prayer circle, and the liar looks over to an apparition of Oscar. Does it go anywhere?

A roiling rivulet is seen at the remarkably ugly manse. Motion going nowhere. (And yet the wood and stone textures of the grey walls stage a pathetic bid to be loved.) Commensurate to the zero structure and the zero tolerance, Vergerus demands, “I want you to come to my home without possessions. I want you to leave your home, your clothes, your jewelry, your valuables, your friends, habits and thoughts. I want you to leave your former life entirely [acrobatics going nowhere; the “little world” again, but lacking wit and the possibility of change, as with Gustav’s rounding off his address, holding a baby and blurting out, “One day she will prove everything I just said wrong. One day she will not only rule the little world, but everything. Everything.”] Emilie—soon to bear those baby girls with the juggernaut—tries to smile, and asks, “Am I to come naked?” “I’m serious, my dear… As if newly born.”

Emilie’s gambit in orienting within the reality that she’s gone to jail, is to the brave and lost idea that she’ll charm him around to her and her children’s advantage. As to Fanny, and especially, Alexander, rebellion was inevitable. (Her chess move, “Don’t play Hamlet, my son,” measures that she would also count upon winning the kids’ over to actually becoming pious. Oscar succumbs to a deadly stroke while rehearsing the part of Hamlet’s hated step-father.) In her absence, to begin dancing around the ridiculous edict, a servant—scabrous and depressive—fills the children’s head with the titillating gossip that Vergerus’ wife and two daughters perished in that peppy stream outside. In no time, Alexander has upped the ante, in face of the servant being bored to death and a perfect audience, to the effect that the ghost of the dead woman has told him that Vergerus murdered his family. The gossip gossips, and Alexander and his doe- eye presence looks into the high beams of someone more virulent than a pushy bore. “Do you think you can besmirch another person’s honor with impunity?” is the quiet before the storm. “I think the bishop hates Alexander,” is the young, too young, picket soldier’s response across a narrow no-man’s-land. Prefacing the caning and imprisonment to come, the Christian soldier rebuts, “I don’t hate you. I love you, but my love is not blind and sloppy. It is strong and harsh… You’re hardening your heart. I have truth and justice on my side… You have a weakness in your character…” Congratulating the boy, bleeding from his wounds, and on his mattress in an attic with bars over the windows, he tells him, “Now you’ve won a great victory. A victory over yourself…” Emilie does show up, and she sits with him on that mattress.

The sequel to this savagery is more savagery—savagery of rival clans, and savagery of appalling commonness. We opened with dubious heroics, and now we’re amidst the only too real. The children go Disney and the bishop shows his harsh love. Batting pleasantries back and forth after a large sum of money has been paid by Isak, the paragon of truth suddenly runs off the rails in certitude that he’s been cheated. He punches the visitor on his head and, hurling him to the floor, delivers a volley of abuse. His Grace follows with, “You thought you could cheat me. You’ll regret this, you repulsive, hooked-nose bastard! Filthy Jewish swine!” (His sister—who had opened the door to him, with, “To be candid, Mr. Jocobi, I find you unpleasant. I’ve neither the time nor the inclination to speak with you”—pushes pushy Vergerus away and tells him, “Calm down!” (What the peacemaker had meant, with her unwelcome involvement, was a flare-up of holy war upon the entire culture and race of Jews—its material venturesomeness, in contrast to Christianity’s supernatural passivity [the contrast spilling over to décor: compromised Helena’s rich goods vs the bishop’s compromised simplicity]. We might well see here the installment of Block, in The Seventh Seal, disregarding the world [little or big] for the sake of escaping death. Not, however, that Isak also doesn’t have something, pleasurably supernatural, up his sleeve.) Vergerus continues, “That swine is trying to steal my children!”

Vogler and Manda, in The Magician,  hallucinate being special guests of the King of Sweden. Mercifully, that indiscretion, does not last long. In our film today, however, the upshot, of the magic breakaway, entails—somewhat like the grating church service at the outset of Winter Light—a wasteland of flaccid dialogue, the wages of refusing to attend to a very difficult truth, a “big world.” Emilie, having been a part of that fantasy where the children zip back to the second floor to confound the villain, has one foot in realizing her marriage is a bust calling for real reflection, and the other foot resigning to blockbuster heaven. The marrieds are sleepless. And, worse than that, they’re scripted by Nicholas Ray. He: “Aren’t you coming to bed? The clock has struck 4:00. I can’t sleep…” She: “Neither can I. Elsa’s very sick [Elsa being Vergerus’ aunt, also living in the rat-trap—one of the possible punishments for Alexander to consider being left in the rat-infested basement]. We ought to send for the doctor.” He: “He’s coming in the morning… What are you drinking?” She: “Hot broth. It helps against insomnia.” He: “May I?” She: “Be my guest.” He: “Can’t you forgive me?” She: “I’m staying with you, aren’t I?” He: “I don’t understand this sudden yielding.” She: “Drink while it’s hot. You insist the children return?” He: “Yes.” She: “In that case, it’s hopeless.” He: “I don’t care if it’s hopeless. I care only what is right.” She: “Isn’t that Elsa coming?” He: “Stay here. I’ll see to her… Can I help you, aunt?” Aunt: “It’s so dark.” Emilie: “What time is it?” He: “Half-past 4.” She: “It’s been a long night.” He: “Try to get some sleep.” She: “My legs hurt. They’re swollen and aching.” He: “You once said you were always changing masks… until finally you didn’t know who you were. I have only one mask. But it’s branded into my flesh. If I tried to tear it off [he weeps]… I always thought people liked me… saw  myself as wise, broad-minded and fair. I had no idea anyone could hate me.” She: “I don’t hate you.” He: “But your son does…”

Hardly Wimbledon. But Emilie, like her husband earlier, shows her killer instinct to get her blood racing. “Your sister gave me sleeping pills for my insomnia. I had three in the broth. I didn’t mean for you to drink it. When you went to see Elsa, I put in three more. You will sleep soundly. [Her melodramatic strain being the most troubling issue here, in view of her subsequent bid to produce theatre art.] When you wake up, I will be gone. I’m going back to my children, my home and my family.” In the aftermath of the drugs, he ranges from, “I’ll change, and you’ll come back,” to, “I’ll poison your life, I’ll follow you from town to town, I’ll ruin your children’s future…” Aunt Elsa, in her delirium, precipitates a deadly fire which takes her out of her misery and takes the bishop out of the equation.

Equation in action fills every step of this rarely illuminated mainspring. Oscar the Good takes himself out of the running by overacting (for the sake of the “the big world”) the part of the ghost of Hamlet’s father, conveying to his son a travesty. A figure of derision to the end; but with that ace in the hole meting out some kind of satisfactory life. Carl, the second son of Helena, a pedant—unlike the professor, in Wild Strawberries, who knows how to beat it—is close to drowning in depression. Though he and his German wife might be mistaken to be another version of the mutually hating couple in the aforementioned film, here the wife is not a spigot of vitriol (Carl being online to be abusive for two). His question, “How is it one becomes second-rate?” does close in on the other professor’s son whose medical career is mired in pedantry. But whereas the latter nihilism shows room for change (be it tiny), the tailspin of Carl affords no functional antithesis. He goes on to a rather sound diagnosis: “I’m stupid and unkind. And I’m most unkind to the only person who cares for me… [For example, “Have you given up washing, or are you starting to rot?”] Why am I a bloody coward? First, I’m a prince, heir to the kingdom. Suddenly, before I know it, I’m deposed… Death taps me on the shoulder. The room is cold, and we can’t pay for kindling” [his spendthrift ways having been cut by Helena and Isak]. That a nadir of sorts has arrived may be recognized by Carl’s contribution to the Christmas Eve uplift—passing wind to give the children a laugh.

The equations of sanguine Gustav have already made an impact. His prospecting at the yuletide finds him more than equal to the offing. Being (in great contrast to Carl), successful amidst a menu of tempting wealth, and active as a restaurateur, he cuts a dashing figure when, after the pageant, he leads his staff to the after-party, holding high and impressive a flaming salver of brandy. But then, during the polka dance of linked hands through corridors and stairways—a well-known orchestration in this work, for a dance of death, stemming from The Seventh Seal—he generates one of many trysts with Maj, a lame but well-endowed servant in Helena’s employ. Up in her garret, there is much mirth and braggadocio. But after breaking her bed, due to stable-level rutting, a remarkable twist comes to darken the practice of acrobatics and juggling (another side of the dance of death). Gustav, drunk but still full of ideas, moves to enjoy Maj on a more systematic basis, by which she would become the owner of a café and he would have a long-term mistress/ franchisee. (The real thrill of this routine adultery—fully aware and undisturbed by his wife—is the slide from sensuality, however cheap, to prosaic, cock-of the-walk business.) During her and his excitement, Maj—having a Christmas of all Christmases—blurts out, “How silly you are. You’re a real numbskull.” He laughs, and retorts, “I’m not a numbskull!”/ “Yes you are,” she persists, “for imagining I’d want anything from you.”/ “Nothing?” he asks, and suddenly he’s troubled, by the possibility that this giddy romp, and its “pleasant” machinations, could move into the area of her becoming his wife. She pivots, “Don’t you see I was joking…”/ “Joking!” the family-man huffs. “In what way!?”/ “Don’t be angry…” she plunges into a numbskull feeling. Although Gustav has put on paper his promise to financially elevate Maj, there remains a dismissiveness. He, needing to get back to the holiday spirit, insists, “I’m not [angry]. But I don’t like being treated like an idiot… Stop laughing!” he demands. (Her laughing hardly being joyous.) Her limp, “I think you’re so funny…” rounds out a little nightmare and an illustration of pathological well-being. (Those who decry such theater, within Bergman’s films, fail to respect the fact that spoken language can be as revelatory as the wildest optics and sonics.) Gustav proceeds to a “quickie” with his wife, before the midnight feast, she as adept in handling the ways of advantage as he is. The heart and soul of gullible planet Earth.

The penultimate episode, following Isak’s queasy deliverance, can be summarized quickly, inasmuch as it elaborates upon the always dreadful features of Steven Spielberg’s  good times for good profits. (Bergman teeing off upon “Only for Pleasure,” and its incitement to dull what skepticism the fun-seekers might.) Emilie’s cute children land up in Jacobi’s faux antique shop, which now reveals itself as an internationally booming puppet factory—replete with Byzantine “spookiness” and catchy, mid-Western kinkiness. A merit-worthy version of The Magician’s cross-dressing, Manda, caged-up, in being unmentionable, peels off Alexander’s night-shirt and channel’s the bishop’s auto-de-fa, like the thrills of all those exotic desert locales, for general admission. We’re assured, from Aron, the puppetry genius, “There are many strange things that can’t be explained. You realize that when you dabble in magic.” Ah, yes, dabbling.

After the evening when Gustav got to the bottom of the Ekdahls, Emilie pays a visit to Helena in her questionable headquarters, with news that, after erroneously finding pedantry to have failed, she has found, perhaps due to her hard-won realization that carnality is a big and engaging world, that she has become ready to follow in the footsteps of Oscar. The matriarch confirms, “On his deathbed, Oscar asked you to   take charge of the theater.” (That elicits some embarrassment in Emilie for her having underestimated Oscar, while overestimating the bishop.) On to something more bracing, the spiritual renovator, puts to Helena, what surely is way over the latter’s head (and heart), “I’d like you to read a new play by August Strindberg. It’s called, ‘A Dream Play.’ I’d thought we’d both perform in it.” (That would be like asking a Steven Spielberg fan to take a look at a Claire Denis film, which is to say, an Ingmar Bergman film. Helena had done a stint of acting in her husband’s troupe; but, like so many with nice bones who go into show-biz, anything beyond cliché would be beyond the pale.) Her response to that curtain call is, “Not on your life! I haven’t appeared on stage for a long time” [since she stopped being a cute ingenue]. Helena goes on to bring the patented little world to bear, in this specific case. “That nasty misogynist! [Strindberg]” With a big smile, Emilie drops the subject. “I won’t disturb you any longer.”/ Master of the small that Helena is, she replies (with a small smile), “You never disturb me… What are you laughing about?” The new wave replies, “Now we’re the ones in charge [Maj, also, taking off for Stockholm, to bring her café to the big show], aren’t we?” Little Helena hedges, “Do you think so?” After Emilie’s leaving that part of the building, the over-rated boss-lady peruses the obscenity. Alexander, the fearful maverick, unable to bid his father farewell because death was, as always, in the air, comes to Grandma and puts his head on her lap. Helena, as skittish as he, reads a passage with as much reluctance as if a killer had broken in. “Everything can happen. Everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist. On a flimsy framework of reality, the imagination spins, weaving new patterns.”