The Emperor of Portugallia

by Selma Lagerlöf

On the morning following the tragic end of her father Glory Goldie ordered a coffin made. When it was ready she had it brought down to the pier, that she might lay the dead man in it the moment he was found. Night and day it had to stand out there. She would not even have it put into the freight shed. The guard locked the shed whenever he left the pier, and the coffin had to be at hand always so that Jan would not be compelled to wait for it.

The old Emperor used to have kind friends around him at the pier, to enliven his long waiting hours. But Glory Goldie nearly always tramped there alone. She spoke to no one, and folks were glad to leave her in peace, for they felt that there was something uncanny about her which had been the cause of her father's death.

In December navigation closed. Then Glory Goldie had the pier all to herself. No one disturbed her. The fishermen who were conducting the search on the lake wanted to quit now. But that put Glory Goldie in despair. She felt that her only hope of salvation lay in the finding of her father. She told the men they must go on with the search while the lake was still unfrozen, that they must search for him down by Nygard Point; by Storvik Point—they must search the length and breadth of all Lake Löven.

For each day that passed Glory Goldie became more desperately determined to find the body. She had taken lodgings in a cotter's but at Borg. In the beginning she remained indoors at least some moments during the day, but after a time her mind became prey to such intense fear that she could scarcely eat or sleep. Now she paced the pier all the while—not only during the short hours of daylight but all through the long, dark evenings, until bedtime.

The first two days after Jan's death Katrina had stayed on the pier with Glory Goldie, and watched for his return. Then she went back to Ruffluck. It was not from any feeling of indifference that she stopped coming to the pier, it was simply that she could not stand being with her daughter and hearing her speak of Jan. For Glory Goldie did not disguise her real sentiments. Katrina knew it was not from any sense of pity or remorse that Glory Goldie was so determined her father's body should rest in consecrated soil, but she was afraid, unreasonably afraid while the one for whose death she was responsible still lay unburied at the bottom of the lake. She felt that if she could only get her father interred in churchyard mould he would not be such a menace to her. But so long as he remained where he was she must live in constant terror of him and of the punishment he would mete out to her.

Glory Goldie stood on the Borg pier looking down at the lake, which was now gray and turgid. Her gaze did not penetrate beneath the surface of the water, yet she seemed to see the whole wide expanse of lake bottom underneath.

Down there sat he, the Emperor of Portugallia, his hands clasped round his knees, his eyes fixed on the gray-green water—in constant expectation that she would come to him. His imperial regalia had been discarded, for the stick and cap had never gone down into the depths with him, and the paper stars had of course been dissolved by the water. He sat there now in his old threadbare coat with two empty hands. But there was no longer anything pretentious or ludicrous about him; now he was only powerful and awe-inspiring.

It was not without reason he had called himself an emperor. So great had been his power in life that the enemy whose evil deeds he hated had been overthrown, while his friends had received help and protection. This power he still possessed. It had not gone from him even in death.

Only two persons had ever wronged him. One of them had already met his doom. The other one was herself—his daughter who had first driven him out of his mind and had afterward caused his death. Her he bided down there in the deep. His love for her was over. Now he awaited her not to render her praise and homage, but to drag her down into the realms of death, as punishment for her heartless treatment of him.

Glory Goldie had a weird temptation: she wanted to remove the heavy coffin lid and slide the coffin into the lake, as a boat, and then to get inside and push away from shore, and afterward stretch herself out on the bed of sawdust at the bottom of the coffin.