Mixed Fiction

FLASHES IN THE NIGHT, edited by William Juhasz and Abraham Rothberg (87 pp.; Random House; $2.50), is a collection of seven short stories by Hungarian writers. Some of the authors took part in the recent revolt and wound up in jail. Some, not all, were Communist Party members, and some stood high in the esteem of their masters. Yet all are aware, in varying degrees, that they and their countrymen are living falsely because they are not living freely. Not all of these stories are good and no one of them is first rate, yet they are pathetically moving because their authors can be felt, and almost seen, each in the tricky situation of one who must tell a necessary truth and may forever lose his right to speak if he tells it.

The best two stories are by Tibor Dery. and his theme is the facelessness of oppression in totalitarian life. In Love, the guards at a Budapest prison inexplicably turn loose one "B," who has been in prison for seven years. But his crime is not known (it was "political"). On his discharge papers the line that should explain the reason for his release is left blank. How common such cases are in Hungary is made clear by the taxi driver who refuses to take the ex-prisoner's tip, the neighbor woman who offers him food and comfort. And when his wife comes home from work and his son from school, there is a moving confrontation that shows how the faceless horror can beat upon yet not crush out the deepest feelings of its victims. Tibor Dery's Behind the Brick Wall tells a story in which impoverished factory workmen are forced to steal, workers' "trials" force pathetic culprits into suicide, and decent men in positions of power are made literally sick by the actions they must take. No one can read it without briefly sharing the sickness.

CHEZ PA VAN, by Richard Llewellyn (527 pp.; Doubleday; $4.95), is one of those literary stews that have a savory aroma when served at the table. The scandalous secrets of a snobbish Parisian hotel promise more than enough meat for a pungent bestseller. But Bestselling Author (How Green Was My Valley) Llewellyn, though he studied in hotel schools, blends his ingredients with the heavy hand of a short-order fry cook.

M. Charles Montfior, master of the Restaurant Chez Pavan, is in love with gentle Liane, mistress of the hotel's flower pots. But apart from a bit of boudoir athletics that no true Frenchman would take seriously, he never gets his girl. The trouble is, he cannot concentrate. He can never quite get his mind off Vashni, an old sweetheart with the heat of youthful summers "always close about her, like an extra fragrance, that of a blossom crisping in the sun, which the kiss found under the heavy gold anklets that polished the skin, and behind her knees . . ." Most important of all, for almost 20 hours a day, seven days a week, he is busy catering to an oddball group of well-heeled vagrants --perverted dress designers, roundheeled models, superannuated opera stars, blue-nosed diplomats, alcoholic newlyweds and assorted upper-class deadbeats.

After a while, even M. Charles begins to gag on life Chez Pavan, offers his own desperate diagnosis: "Perhaps I should go to an alienist."

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