Flowering Inferno: Tales of Sinking Hearts

De Vallbona, a professor of Spanish at the University of St. Thomas in Texas, describes suffering--mostly by women--in these dark stories. A modern-day Circe, who teaches classics at a university, appears to be an aging street person to all but the students she chooses to seduce. A lonely woman whose grown children have ``turned into voices slithering along the fine telephone wires'' takes solace in her daily sightings of a neighbor's truck but she resists making friends with the man. When a husband rapes his wife on their wedding night, her anticipation turns to resignation as she accepts ``the yoke of routine and enslavement that marriage is supposed to be.'' Some fablelike stories have a broader bent: enemy soldiers embrace and declare their unity after their commanding officers order them to fire on one another, and an alien being, reporting to his ``Supreme Spaciality,'' recommends Earthlings' belief in God, love and charity while disparaging their failure to live by those principles. Sometimes the lack of context in these brief tales is frustrating and the downbeat endings can be predictable, but de Vallbona's precise language and an able translation make these pieces sharp and lucid. (Feb.)