A woman with three souls

Rosa Rosà

• Publisher: KKIEN Publ. Int.
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9788833260433
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Storytelling

As a coherent development of the themes already expressed in the author's articles, A woman with three souls is therefore an ironic prefiguration, in a futuristic and fantastic key, of an Eve of the future, incarnated, in literary fiction, in the featureless and "dusty" Giorgia Rossi who in a short period of time experiences, due to a psychic alteration caused by an electromagnetic accident, three personalities very different from her original nature (emblem of the cliché of the wife "good", "mild", "shy", resigned to their fate, incarnated in a body "that has never in any case aroused an erotic interest"). This personalities imply, respectively, symptoms of sensuality lacking any moral prejudice, a virile temperament and extraordinary sensitivity, of a mediumistic nature, amplified by "new senses irradiated immaterially in the infinite" a continuous escape from the constraints of daily banality.
Giorgina's stages, whom ternary structure of her soul is a reference to the magic force of the number that characterizes it, symbolize the process of evolution towards a state of higher, alchemical consciousness, which is reached thanks to the fusion of all senses in one, being able to cross them and to go beyond them.
Without knowing what the woman of the future will be, we need only to read the epilogue of the novel to reflect on the transformations that have already happened in our time and "not to be caught, by surprise, by the evolutionary fatality that looms". Rosa Rosà, pseudonym of Edith von Haynau also Edith Arnaldi was an Italian naturalized writer and illustrator, exponent of Futurism.
Born in Vienna from an aristocratic family, she was educated at home by tutors and only in adulthood she attended the art school in Vienna against family advice. She met in 1907 and in 1908 she married the Italian writer Ulrico Arnaldi, with whom he had four children between 1909 and 1915. She approached the Futurist movement during the First World War, while her husband was at the battlefront.
In her literary and artistic activity she adopted the pseudonym of Rosa Rosà, from a homonymous Venetian town. She became interested in literature, design and graphics.
A woman with three souls (1918), is considered one of the first example of feminist science fiction literature.

1.

For the Rossi couple, life unfolded simply and uneventfully, with nothing deep or complicated in it. To them, everything appeared just as it was, straightforward and transparent, without the slightest hint of further meaning.

 

They knew nothing of the multifaceted realities that lie beneath the surface of things.

Giorgina Rossi was young, but her youth was starting to collect dust.

Even for those who knew her well, it was difficult to remember anything about her.

One could say that Nature wanted her to be average in every way. Her face was all too insignificant, and her eyes too inexpressive for her to be attractive. But fortunately Nature stopped before making her truly ugly, although it had given her a body that never once aroused anyone’s erotic interest. It did however grant her a certain simple and slender gracefulness, making it a pity that she had to wear such bland little dresses, mended and updated year after year to save money.

The same went for her personality; in twenty-six years, she never uttered a single word that grabbed anyone’s attention. On top of that, she said little. Those close to her easily failed to notice when something was either too much for her, too dull or too taxing.

She was good, she was meek and she was shy.

Umberto Rossi, her husband, was a traveling salesman for a dry goods company.

He had a horn made of coral hanging from his watch chain and carried a used toothpick next to the fountain pen in his waistcoat pocket.

The couple has just finished breakfast. The wife was clearing the table.

“There’s nothing else we can do,” she said to her husband, pointing to a letter covered with greasy fingerprints, “if we don’t want Maria to end up sleeping on the streets we must have her live with us.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Umberto Rossi replied, “but I didn’t want to ask you.”

He was not used to showing his feelings, but he was obviously happy with his wife’s proposal. And with reason: the girl in question was his daughter.

He never told anyone who the mother was. Yet he had never forgotten to send a monthly check to the aged relation whose death was announced in letter. While he put on his jacket and his hat and prepared to leave, Giorgina – with all her humble kindness in her voice – continued to talk to him: “You’ll see that I’ll love her as if she were my own daughter...”

Once alone, she set to tidying up the rest of the kitchen.

With the swift motions of someone used to this sort of thing, of someone accustomed to housework and nothing else, she wiped off the crumbs from the kitchen table and poured the leftover wine from the glasses back into the bottle.

After arranging the four chairs symmetrically around the kitchen table, she picked up a dust rag and began to polish the shiny walnut furniture. Once this task was complete, she took a bundle of garments out of the sideboard, exited her apartment, and crossed the landing to ring the doorbell on the other side of the hall. A portly, ruddy-faced elderly woman answered the door:

“Good morning, Signora Gina, how are you?”

“I’m fine, thank God. Am I disturbing you, Signora Boni? I came to ask the usual small favor.”

“The sewing machine? Of course! Come in, you’re always welcome.”

They entered a big, messy room where Boni’s son, a medical student, was studying near the window in his shirtsleeves. At the sight of their mother, the two young daughters stuffed something back into their pockets, stifling their laughter.

“I brought my thread with me,” Giorgina Rossi said. “I won’t be very long, twenty minutes or so.”

“Don’t worry about it...” said Mrs. Boni, taken with her own generosity.

“So, what’s new?”

Giorgina, sitting in front of the sewing machine, had already wound the thread around the spools and placed the first tacked hem under the presser foot. The student, annoyed by the sound of the machine, covered his ears with his hands. Giorgina was ready for the inquisition:

“My husband’s niece is coming in a few days. A sixteen year old orphan.”

“She’s coming to stay with you? Sixteen years old?...”

Mrs. Boni willingly lent her sewing machine in exchange for information about what was going on at the Rossi residence.

“She’s an orphan? Whose daughter is she?”

Giorgina explained the best she could, adding:

“She’ll help me around the house, that way we can let the maid go and save money...”

“Oh! Don’t fool yourself, my dear Signora Rossi! A girl that age isn’t good for much, and the cost of keeping her around is more than she’s worth: look at my daughters, they spend money, and when they’ll finally be old enough to work and repay me for all the sacrifices I made bringing them up, they’ll fall in love, and I’ll still have to thank God if they find a man who’s willing to marry them; watch out for that niece...orphans are nothing but trouble!”

The chimes of the grandfather clock softly rang three times. From the open kitchen door drifted the strong smell of garlic and soapy water mixed with the pungent odor of floor cleaner.

2.

The renowned prof. Igreca took off his galoshes in the doorway, still panting from his climb up the stairs.

The renowned prof. Ipsilon, the owner of the house, went up to him to shake his hand.

Prof. Igreca said: “My esteemed colleague, I received your invitation with much delight. I can guess what this is about: you’ve succeeded in discovering the long-sought formula you were after...”

With a solemn look on his face, Prof. Ipsilon accompanied his guest into the laboratory without saying a word. There, Prof. Ix was waiting, hunched over a microscope.

Upon the tables were scattered basins, distilling tubes, vials, flasks and numerous other scientific instruments for all kinds of experiments.

A sickly sweet odor hung in the air.

Prof. Igreca and Prof. Ix shook hands then sat down, waiting for the master of the house to tell them why they had been summoned.

He sat down at his desk and spoke: “My dear and esteemed colleagues! You know how much respect I have for both you and your work.

I called you here today to ask your advice on a most interesting phenomenon that I myself was unable to explain, although I thought about it long and hard.

“Never in my long career as a scientist have I encountered such an unexpected and mysterious case. Let me tell you what it is about:

“Last night, around eleven, I was working in this very room on one of my favorite experiments: you are well aware that I have now succeeded in isolating the radioactive elements of Xenit I discovered a few years ago. I was heating over a Bunsen burner the end of a vial that contained a hefty quantity of those elements. Outside, last night’s frightening storm was at its peak.

“I had just finished heating the vial, when a bolt of lightning shook all the walls and windows.

An electrical discharge of unusual intensity had struck the lightning rod on top of this house or another nearby.

“I felt a violent jolt through all the nerves and bones in my body.

“When it hit, I was putting away the Bunsen burner I had turned off moments before.

Upon returning to my work table, completely stunned by the jolt my nerves had experienced, I noticed, to my amazement and disappointment, that the vial, which I had left on a piece of isolation carpet for only a second, had vanished!”

“Was the vial the only thing that vanished, or was something else missing as well?”

Prof. Ix interrupted, deeply interested in the matter.

“Only the vial, and, even stranger, I could not find, as much as I tried, either on the walls, the table, or anything nearby, a single trace that resembled a vial struck directly by lightning. It clearly has something to do with a much more complex phenomenon. I would not have solicited your expertise if it regarded a mere accident.

“I had...