Book Review Alisa Velaj

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: ALISA VELAJ

Alisa Velaj was born in Albania, in 1982. She holds a Ph.D. in Albanian Language and Literature, which she has been teaching as subjects at university level, while writing poetry, prose, essays, articles, and research studies. Velaj was shortlisted for the annual international Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in UK in June 2014. Her work has been published in over 100 international online forums, printed magazines and antholo- gies across many countries (USA, UK, Sweden, Australia, Israel, India). Alisa earned an Artist-in-Residence Scholarship in February 2019 and attended the AIR Litteratur Västra Götaland Program in Villa Martin- son, Jonsered, Sweden. Velaj is the author of the poetry book “With no sweat at all”, (Carvena Barva Press, 2021), translated into the English by Ukë Buçpapaj. In 2020, she won The National Prize in Poetry, awarded by the Albanian Ministry of Culture.

ALISA VELAJ

A NARRATION WITH A VIEW OF THE WATER

(Impressions about the book “Monte Carlo Days & Nights” by Susan Tepper)

The book “Monte Carlo Days & Nights” by Susan Tepper provides for the reader a narration with a view of the waters. Even though the book is fragmented in several narrations with a telegraphic writing style, we can say indeed that it is a single narration, where the narrator stops at each fragment as a breathing stopover. The first narrative station opens with a not so common description:

“This hotel has bird chirps in the halls. The walls papered in green vines with perching parrots. Guests are expected to suspend reality and believe the wallpaper parrots are making the chirpy noises. It’s strange.” Parrots everywhere. The man in front of the woman (who narrates in retrospective) will also take the features of a man-parrot along the subject of the text. In the fourth narration “The One”, he says the exact words which he uses to end the last narration “Dinner” with: “We should get married, he says. But I will never marry. But if I were to ever marry, you’d be the one. ”

But what does this repetition of phrases presuppose in the psyche of a male? Lack of love, avoidance from love, or masculine fears turned into cliché? Actually, the repetition cliché is an inevitable reference of spiritual emptiness. The male character is simply there, and he reports about himself with the same indifference as a chronicler with an icy voice would report on necrology pagesthe death of someone (or many people) by a current tornado. The difference here is that the chronicler narrates about himself and not about the others. He is icy in a fire zone. Let’s say that the fire of love of the narrator burns only her. The other one passes nearby without understanding how to even warm himselflet alone his partner.

He is Eros and Thanatos, whereas she is Eros and Love. He lacks feelings, actually he has never known them, while she understands from the beginning that their relationship is hopeless. However, even though she has understood that he is a man-parrot, the vague hope for the sake of feeling puts her in a dilemma whether she should be the first to say goodbye or to wait until the swamping arrives. The context where the events happen is also very important to understand the psychological and symbolic dismounting of the characters and the situations they are thrown in. The author herself uses the words “wet nightmare”. When she understands that he cannot carry love and that love cannot carry him (the partner) either, she gets wet from the nightmare of a dream without future. Of an awful dream she will run away from with the same rush, as we run away from the nonsense squeak of parrots.

The story has water/waters/sea in the background. Waters have so a triple function: first, waters are an indication of the erotic passion; second, as a wet nightmare that invades the unexpressed anger of the female, and third, waters as a flooding of a man. The flooded man is a nightmare which she escapes from, whereas to himself, the flooded man is simply an unmanly man, a man-child and a man-parrot, who in the war between Eros and Thanatos, gets swallowed with pleasure by the latter. A narration that mustn’t be missed, as it mustn’t be missed the love for our soul and our body.

Susan Tepper BIO:

Susan Tepper is a twenty year published writer and the author of nine books of fiction and poetry. Two more books (a novel and a poetry chapbook) will be published next year by Cervena Barva Press. Tepper writes in all genres. Her stories, poems, interviews, essays and opinion columns have appeared worldwide both in print and online. Awards and honors include 19 Pushcart Prize Nominations, and a Pulitzer Prize Nomination for the novel ‘What May Have Been’ which is adapted into a stage play and will be presented Off-Broadway in late 2022 as ‘The Crooked Heart.’ Additionally, Tepper was shortlisted in the Francis Ford Coppola ZOETROPE Award for the Novel in 2006, and her story ‘Whores’ from Monte Carlo Days & Nights was named Best Story of 17 Years of Vestal Review. Her story DEER has appeared onstage at InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia, and was nominated for National Public Radio’s Writing Aloud series. For a decade Tepper curated and hosted a reading series called FIZZ at the KGB Bar in New York City, as well as hosting an Author Interview Series in the infamous Algonquin Hotel Lobby, also in NYC. Prior to taking up the writing life, Tepper worked as an actress, singer, flight attendant, airline marketing manager and overseas tour guide. She lives with her husband and her dog Otis in the New York area.

More information on this Novella and her other books can be seen on her website at

www.susantepper.com

Monte Carlo Days & Nights, a Novella by Susan Tepper

4 chapters

Hotel

This hotel has bird chirps in the halls. The walls papered in green vines with perching parrots. Guests are expected to suspend reality and believe the wallpaper parrots are making the chirpy noises. It’s strange. The halls are long, narrow, winding. Stuffy and airless for such a fancy hotel. Left-turning right-turning halls. He jogs them to and from the elevator.

Is this a Monte thing? I ask him. Bird noises in the halls?

People who go to Monte Carlo a lot call it Monte. It’s an insider thing. This being only my first time but I want to belong.

He’s looking across the room at me. I’m still in bed. He’s slumped in the deep leather chair near the open balcony doors. A light breeze blows the sheer curtains. We’ve just finished having before-dinner sex.

Bird sounds? I really don’t know, he tells me. I’ve only stayed in this particular hotel.

But how many times have you been here?

Ten or so, he says.

In the same hotel?

He nods.

Don’t you long for a change?

I have a change, he says. You.

Then he comes back to the huge bed and does me again. He’s fast but one of the best. He gets you there in half the time most guys take. I tell him and he laughs. It must be the jogging he says.

Dinner is alfresco on a small stone patio surrounded by dense hedges. He says we can eat inside the restaurant if I prefer.

night. I look toward the restaurant which also seems lovely. It’s nicer out here, I say, it’s a beautiful

Your dress is beautiful, he says.

Thank you. I bought it in Bombay on a layover.

The purple gauze and gold threads suit you, he says. I like the strapless, you have the shoulders for it. The gold flat sandals are perfect. Did you buy the lizard purse in Bombay?

No, I bought that in New York. I rub my hand across the pale flat lizard purse in my lap. I don’t mention I bought it at sixty percent off. I just say I thought it would go well with everything I packed since it’s a neutral color.

You’re a fashion plate, he says.

This makes me dizzy. Or maybe it’s the gin and tonic I drank so quickly. The salty humidity. I feel nervous. I don’t feel nervous during sex with him. Only during normal.

Peach

After dinner we take a stroll through Monte’s ancient streets.

When we return to the room, I place our breakfast order for the next morning. Would you mind doing that? he had asked me. Of course not, I answered back.

I dial room service and set it up to be delivered at 9am. He likes when I order him a peach –my calling it a fresh peachto room service. He smiles, fingering his long beard, says how nicely I order and that it makes him happy. It would never occur to me that calling a peach a fresh peachcould make a man happy.But, I’m happy to hear that. Because secretly I’m afraid. I’m afraid of most men who have achieved a pinnacle of success that I will never reach.

I have just come off a month of cleaning planes. Right in the middle of summer the union airplane cleaners went on strike. We, the stewardesses, became the strike cleaners. The real cleaners broke all the vacuums and destroyed most of the cleaning equipment. We had to drag brooms down the plane aisles and through the seat areas. It’s hell pulling a broom over sticky spilled soda and dry hardened-on food.

People smoked on the planes. We had to reach into the little arm-rest ash trays and empty the butts into plastic garbage bags. It was pretty gross. The galleys even more gross. The lavatories the most gross. I wore a mask and rubber gloves when cleaning the lavs.

One hot afternoon I had to drive the biffy truck that went under the plane where the toilets emptied. That day I wore a football helmet and mask and goggles and gloves. And a damned good thing. I came out splattered with blue biffy liquid. All too horrible for words. The strikers stood by the runway fence heaving cans and bottles at us. Curses. Then it was over.

Now I’m on the French Riviera. Ordering him a fresh peach. Why don’t you get one too, he asks. But not really. He doesn’t say that. I get what I want. It’s assumed. He has arranged a mani-pedi, massage and mud masks for us. The day I arrived in Monte, a shopping bag from Hermes sat on the bed. In it was the most gorgeous long silk scarf. He called it my welcome gift.

The luxury everywhere here is undeniable. Yet I would have liked him to suggest that I get a fresh peach, also.

Monte

It’s been decided that we will breakfast in the room every day. A nice view of the sea from our 7th floor balcony. Then up to the roof top pool. All are his suggestions, which I agree to. A lot of the women go topless, he says. Will you?

Too modest, I answer.

I don’t mention that the only swimsuit I packed is black and strapless. But I wouldn’t go topless anyway.

The roof top pool is mobbed by the time we get up there. We find two chaise lounges to the rear of the crowd, almost pushed to the railing. I like being back from the throngs of people tanning themselves dark. It’s nice to be able to look out over the railing at the sparkling Mediterranean. Each time I want to take a dip in the pool, I have to thread my way around a lot of chaises. Men look up but I pretend not to notice.

When the pool waiters come around he orders Perrier for us. He says it’s important we stay hydrated. He orders so many little bottles of Perrier I have to keep using the toilet. It’s embarrassing. I combine it with a dunk in the pool after, hoping he doesn’t notice where I detour first.

Poolside, lunch is light – a salad for him. I bypass all the heartier food on the menu, things I’d really like to have, and order a crab cake. It comes on a bed of white curly lettuce. Afterward I still feel hungry. I don’t order dessert because he doesn’t.

He suggests a stroll around Monte. We go back to the room and change out of our swimsuits and almost have sex.

I admire Monte’s cobblestone streets, the way the little town is built up in steps, like climbing low mountains. Yes, it’s lovely here, he says. In the shops he buys lots of gifts. Cartier perfumes in the red box. Watches for secretaries and assistants. Gucci for the less important, a vintage Cartier tank watch for his top assistant, Marcella. With hers he takes a long time deciding. Gold or platinum? he asks the saleswoman. Definitely the platinum, Monsieur, she advises. He doesn’t buy me a watch. I love the Gucci sport with the colorful striped canvas band.

For each night’s dinner he has chosen a different restaurant for us. He says it’s arranged so they build. Clutching two shopping bags, he says it’s time to go back and get ready. He says the clothes I brought are great.

The room has two closets. Mine is on the left. I think about him looking over my clothes, maybe while I was showering. Wondering if he slid the hangers, one by one, to get a better look.

I’m glad to be having dinner soon. I’m feeling very hungry.

He says he can’t get over how I managed to fit so many gorgeous things into one suitcase.

We airline gals know how to pack a bag, I say.

Profiteroles And Tea

Early in the summer, before the plane cleaners went on strike, he took me to the home of his parents. They have a big manor style house in Westchester County. Both are respected neurologists.

He and his mother are close though I heard them arguing a few times. Once when I was skimming bugs from their pool. An argument over nothing. I believe they may have had sex at some point during his childhood. Why I believe this, I can’t say for sure. It’s a feeling I got while being there.

Of course we had sex in their house. We always have sex. But we were in an entirely separate wing of that huge place. He told me to scream if I felt like. I did feel like and I screamed. He is that kind of lover. I don’t scream here in Monte Carlo. I don’t know how thick these walls are though he says they are thick enough. That I should scream if I get the urge.

In the manor house I screamed. He seemed to be super-charged sexually there. I was all over him and screaming and he told me to scream more. And I thought Well he wants them to hear. It cooled me down a lot.

Now, here in Monte, we have just finished having sex. He knelt at the side of the bed in front of my body. It’s the most power I’ve ever felt. But now it’s over and he’s back in the power mode and I’m in the bathroom.

I check my face in the mirror. It is an undeniably good face. I’m happy to have it. My breasts are good, too, and my shoulders. Right down to my toes. All nice. It takes the pressure off. Women with less nice have to work harder at everything. Especially hard to gain entrance into the rich world. The Monte world.

He comes into the bathroom and we shower together. He shampoos my hair. We take turns soaping each other.

Let’s go out for profiteroles and tea, he says as the water cascades down.