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the air, by the light that seemed to lend an opaqueness to things so
that, for a moment, he was sure he had walked from the house
right into a dream . . . . He had a sense of event
—
something was
happening, had indeed already happened and there was nothing
more to be done” (Rosca, 1988: 174). After learning that they are
at war again, this time with America, Carlos Lucas said to the girls
in the house: “Pray for the men,” “and see that you a get pregnant.
As quickly as possible. We will lose a lot of human beings” (Rosca,
1988: 175). Carlos Lucas interprets the war as a crisis of
population, which requires resolution through everyday efforts on
behalf of the girls to get pregnant as quickly as possible.
While Rosca brings readers’ attention to the historical events
as affective experiences, she simultaneously emphasizes the
impossibility of the formation of history as a form of knowledge
—
and a record
—
to be passed down because changing rulers and
national languages are so overwhelming that historical memories
are constantly interrupted. The violent transition from Spanish
Catholic colonialization to American imperial conquest, from
American expeditionary force to Japanese occupation, from war to
revolution, to peasant uprising and guerrilla warfare, all of these
political upheavals seem to engulf the nation in repeated
nightmares of the state of war. One of the consequences of these
head-spinning changes of rulers and languages is the loss of
memories. Rosca expresses this concern through Maya’s mouth
when she witnesses how the American presence in Manila changes
the naming of the streets: “It was a kind of sin, certainly, to
forget
—
but it was not easy to remember, especially when names
changed, languages changed. A century-old name held that century;
when replaced, a hundred years were wiped out at one stroke.
Amnesia set it; reality itself, being metamorphic, was affected”
(1988: 186). Historical amnesia, ignorance of the past, ruptured
family lineages are responsible for the characters’ repeated patterns
of behavior, duplicated fates and unresolved shames. It is as if the
characters are trapped in a time loop. As Rocio Davis observes: