Mixed Fiction

FLAMINGO FEATHER, by Laurens van der Post (341 pp.; Morrow; $3.95). A bloody envelope, a pink-and-white feather, a sailor's cap, a murdered Negro--what does it all add up to and how does it tie in with the South African firm of Lindel-baum & Co., wine and spirit importers? Thanks to the throb of distant tom-toms (which seem to be saying Mau Mau), the least alert reader can guess that the spirits imported by evil Mr. Lindelbaum are more vodka and voodoo than honest Scotch. South African-born Novelist van der Post (Venture to the Interior) has taken his theme from French Philosopher-Sociologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl: "Le reve est le vrai dieu des Primitifs [The dream is the real god of primitive peoples]." The Russians know that the far-flung Amangtak-wena tribe is expecting its chief witch doctor to have a "dream," i.e., to receive from the spirit world an oracular directive on tribal policy. Hunter-Hero Pierre de Beauvilliers suspects a sinister hand when a Negro clutching a flamingo feather (the summons to a dream powwow) is murdered. Pierre gets on the scent like a pointer, and soon every trail is dotted with silent tribesmen padding to the rendezvous where the dream (a Commie plant) will be revealed and a huge arms cache is to be doled out. Author van der Post writes beautifully about the African landscape, and intelligently about the Reds' dangerous ability to poison man's dreams. Flamingo Feather is a political thriller of powerful literary magic.

THE MOMENT BEFORE THE RAIN, by Elizabeth Enright (253 pp.; Harcourt, Brace; $3.50), is a collection of 18 short stories with a sharply etched image on nearly every page. A woman emerges from childbirth feeling "like a huge sea shell washed up by the highest wave, empty but still ringing from the tides." There are trees hung with grey moss "like . . . the wigs of old witches" and an old-fashioned store that is full of "ribbon, cloth and clean middle-aged ladies: dry goods, indeed." The shining words of this gifted writer often appear on obvious and outsized mountings. The last man on earth thinks things over; sometimes he's happy, sometimes he's blue (5,000 words). A little girl discovers that there is more fun in a poor but jolly household than in a rich but strait-laced one (6,000 words). But there is at least one magnificent exception, The First Face, a beautifully conceived and brilliantly told epiphany of a woman and her newborn son. And--perhaps there is a moral here--it is only 1,200 words long.

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