Germano Almeida: The Last Will and Testament of Señor da Silva

Except that actually he made his first fortune selling umbrellas at jacked-up prices to a desperate, rain-soaked population. And, truth be told, he only had the capital for those umbrellas because he cooked his employers' books. Maybe that was the open secret that kept the town's other leading businessmen from voting him--the most successful wholesaler on São Vicente--into their exclusive club. Or maybe they turned their noses up at his provincial roots. Nobody ever talked about it much.

And so the real life of Señor da Silva emerges, in smaller and larger revelations, to the reader and to the town of Mindelo, but only after his death. Germano Almeida, a Cape Verdean writing in Portuguese, gently makes his character more human--for better and for worse--with every page of The Last Will and Testament of Señor da Silva.

Businesses close and the whole town gathers for the funeral procession of a man they never really knew. But the señor has left his adopted town a last will that does more than dispose of his property. In 387 pages--the reading of the will takes all afternoon--he reveals his passions and his troubles to people who only knew his warehouses, his ships, and the innovative automobile he brought over from America.

We meet a da Silva who is a little devious, a little passionate, a little pathetic. He is a little ashamed of his rural upbringing and nostalgic for his home. He is clumsy in love and romance, fearful of a woman's powers and desperate to have power over one himself. He does not know how to express his love for his illegitimate daughter--the real revelation in his will--without seeming to make a pass at her.

The Last Will and Testament, first published in 1991, has been translated into at least seven other languages and was made into a movie in 1998, but this is Almeida's first introduction to English-speaking audiences. Sheila Glaser's translation is clumsy at times: Sentences lose their rhythm and formal phrases bump uncomfortably up against folksy idioms. But the gentleness and complexity of the story comes through. Although it is set in the islands of Cape Verde off the western coast of Africa, Almeida's story could take place anywhere where we think we really know our neighbors.