Dubious battle

DOES anybody remember the Falkland Islands war? Fought over the course of 10 weeks during 1982, this territorial dispute between Britain and Argentina ended with a decisive English victory that led to the downfall of Argentine military dictator Leopoldo Galtieri.

And yet, outside Argentina (and to a lesser extent, Britain), the war lingers as a historical oddity, a 19th century sort of engagement, colonial in nature, between two nations unsure of their influence in the world. If anything, it’s an almost perfect metaphor for the absurdity of armed conflict: a battle over a rocky, inhospitable landscape of no strategic value, where sheep outnumber people by more than 200 to 1.

This sense of absurdity resides at the center of Rodolfo Fogwill’s novel “Malvinas Requiem,� which takes its title from the Argentine name for the Falklands. Originally published in 1982, and now translated into English for the first time, this exquisite little book tells the story of 24 Argentine soldiers who have deserted their posts in the latter days of the war.

Fogwill portrays a world of chaos, in which snow doesn’t seem to fall from the sky but is “driven along horizontally by the wind� and soldiers freeze to death with frightening regularity. To protect themselves, the deserters (known as “dillos,� short for armadillos) hole up in an elaborately constructed network of underground tunnels called the Warren from which they venture at night to scavenge or to trade with both the British and the Argentines. In such a situation, Fogwill wants us to understand, there is no larger social order, no loyalty except to oneself. “Let them kill each other,� one dillo says about the soldiers who are still fighting, “so they all . . . leave us in peace.�

Peace, of course, is a relative concept, since even in hiding the dillos suffer the effects of war. Death is a constant, almost casual presence, a source of both opportunity and ennui. In one scene, a pair of dillos go out to melt snow for water, only to come upon a frozen patrol. “Incredible,� one of them says, “people die and their watches keep on ticking. . . .�

Later, a dillo named Dieguez is brought back to the Warren after being mortally wounded by a grenade. “Everybody was relieved when Dieguez finally died,� Fogwill writes. “For a while, until it was dark and they could take him outside . . . it seemed as if something was fundamentally missing, but then, what with all the work involved in hauling him out and distributing his rations, they forgot all about Dieguez and his moans.�

Ultimately, Fogwill tells us, there is nothing gained here, no redemption of any kind. It’s an idea he makes explicit by jumping from the war to a time afterward, when an unnamed narrator writes it all down.

Is this first-person voice the author’s? Maybe yes, and maybe no. More to the point is the idea that all of this -- the war, the Warren, the dillos -- are little more than apparitions, “zombies existing underground, which wasn’t really that far from the truth.�

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