The night of the invasion I went home and turned on the television. One of the generals was making a speech. It was so full of clichés and the bloated rhetoric about Argentina and its greatness that I turned it off. I do not know when I realized that there was going to be a war. It was certainly not the next day. I had my dinner in the restaurant, where they knew me by now; I usually brought a book to read, but this time I bought that morning’s newspaper and read it as I waited for my steak. I did not believe that the English would do anything other than make diplomatic noises. La Nación seemed sure that we would hold the islands. The photograph of the Argentinian flag on the Malvinas across the front page left me cold. I walked home thinking that the invasion was part of the fantasy world that made the army and the navy and the air force feel important, but it would mean nothing to anybody else. I did not turn on the television that night.

Soon, however, I became involved. I found that I was listening to news bulletins on the radio, that I bought all of the newspapers, including the Buenos Aires Herald, and read them carefully over breakfast. I now realized that the British were going to declare war on us, but I still believed that any threats they made would not be serious: the islands were too small and too far away from them. I thought that the generals would eventually negotiate a settlement with the British, and the islands would be held by both countries for a time and then would revert to Argentina. In work that day there was still not much talk about the Malvinas.

But something was changing in the atmosphere of the city, something real and clear and unmistakable. Suddenly, the newspapers and the radio and television became interesting, as though a new dimension had been added to our world and people had plugged back into public life. No one needed anymore to talk in code, or keep quiet, or confine conversations to foreign vacations and future inflation. Now we could use their names, we could say the words Galtieri or Lami Dozo in the staff room or in the classroom. We could talk about the government in bars. No one was against the invasion: the islands obviously belonged to Argentina, anyone looking at the map would know that, everyone in the world knew it now.

My students asked me if I supported Argentina and I said of course I did. I said that the entire history of the decline of the British Empire was about forcing the British to leave. The Irish had done it, so had the Indians, indeed so had the North Americans. The British would never listen to negotiations unless there was force, I said. I tried to get them back to the lesson, but the tension was too great for that. No one could speak of anything else. I found it hard to be alone.