On the Nature of Being Qfwfq

It is impossible to write a character who does not have some sort of flaw, because without character flaws you have no plot. In Qfwfq, the main character of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, the defining flaw is that he almost constantly misunderstands the intentions and thoughts of others, while he is often misunderstood by them; he also seems to have an underlying fear of being inadequate.

For a certain period of time, Qfwfq is the last living dinosaur, and because he has nowhere else to go, he ends up living in a village of the mammals that now inhabit the Earth. He is able to do this because the dinosaurs have, by now, been gone for long enough that nobody remembers what they looked like. As during several other lifetimes (of which he has many throughout the book), he eventually falls in love, in this case with a “New One” by the name of Fern-flower. Most of their relationship consists of her telling him about her dreams, which he generally misinterprets in one way or another. In one particular instance, she describes a dream in which a particularly magnificent dinosaur passes her house while ignoring her completely, and Qfwfq, as usual, reacts in the wrong way:

“The young creature had mistaken my shyness for disdainful pride. Now, when I recall it, I realize that all I had to do was maintain that attitude a little longer, make a show of haughty detachment, and I would have won her completely. Instead, the revelation so moved me that I threw myself at her feet, tears in my eyes, and said: ‘No, no, Fern-flower, it’s not the way you believe; you’re better than any Dinosaur, a hundred times better, and I feel so inferior to you…’” (104)

Fern-flower, of course, does not expect or want this reaction, and as Qfwfq says, “a feeling of uneasiness” develops between them. Qfwfq reacts wrongly to her dream because he is afraid of being misunderstood, of being thought of as something he does not believe he is. He also displays this is his other reactions to his misinterpretations of Fern-flower’s dreams; when she informs him of a dream in which a dinosaur wants to eat her alive and she likes him for it, for example:

“That dream should have made me understand many things and especially one thing: that Fern-flower desired nothing more than to be assaulted. This was the moment for me to embrace her. But the Dinosaur they imagined was too different from the Dinosaur I was…I missed a good opportunity.” (101)

Here, too, he does not react as Fern-flower expects and wants him to, because he takes this to mean she perceives him differently than he really is, and he wants to correct that perception. However, in his rush to ensure that no one thinks of him in the wrong way, he completely disregards the intentions of those he interacts with. He assumes they think in a certain way, and he filters all of their actions through his own misapprehension of their personality, reacting to what he thinks is meant. It is an interesting irony that, by trying to make himself understood, he misunderstands everyone else.

In one of his earlier incarnations (which likely influenced his feelings as a dinosaur), Qfwfq is some sort of amphibian; what kind, we will never know. All of his family, at the time when the story occurs, have made the transition from life in water to life on land—all, that is, except his great-uncle N’ba N’ga, who stubbornly insists on remaining a fish. Because of this situation, the rest of the family is engaged in a continuous struggle to convince N’ba N’ga that life is better on land. Around this point, Qfwfq falls in love with an undefined reptile, most likely a lizard, by the name of Lll. As has been mentioned, Qfwfq is an amphibian and not entirely free from the pull of the water, so he worries about appearing inferior to Lll as he sees her, leading him to hide his uncle’s existence:

“The time had come for Lll to meet my family; and since its oldest and most authoritative member was Great-Uncle N’ba N’ga, I couldn’t avoid a visit to him, to introduce my fiancée. But every time an opportunity occurred, I postponed it, out of embarrassment; knowing the prejudices among which she had been brought up, I hadn’t yet dared tell Lll that my great-uncle was a fish.” (75)

Qfwfq, as demonstrated in other passages, seems to view Lll as a superior creature in relation to him, because he is less evolved than she. Thus it follows that he fears that, if it is revealed that his great-uncle is one of those who shuns the land with the insistence that only the sea will last, Lll will associate Qfwfq with this philosophy; she will think of him a too undeveloped for her to continue seeing him. Understandably, he does not wish to be thought of as a lower life form. Furthermore, in this paragraph at least, he appears to be trying to delude himself as to the nature of his secrecy. He cites “the prejudices among which [Lll] had been brought up” as if to say that he expects Lll to be species-ist (which seems the only appropriate word) toward N’ba N’ga, and that this is the main reason he avoids introducing her to his uncle. As it turns out, of course, he has once again misunderstood, and Lll’s reaction on meeting N’ba N’ga is not at all what was expected.

After finally encountering Qfwfq’s uncle, far from considering him to be a lower life form, Lll becomes extremely interested in the nature of life as a fish. She begins visiting N’ba N’ga frequently, learning from him how to swim as a fish would—or somewhat differently, as she is of an entirely different species. Qfwfq eventually realises this and believes he understands her motives, but, yet again, he is mistaken:

“It was a game, for her: I understood. But a game I didn’t like. I had to recall her to reality, to the future that was awaiting her.” (81)

A particularly interesting aspect of his reaction is the lack of acceptance of his uncle’s lifestyle. Earlier in the story, he mentions that N’ba N’ga is unwilling to accept a reality other than his own. By his own statement shown above, however, Qfwfq reveals that he is just as unwilling to acknowledge that anyone might have a different idea of what is an ideal life. This, too, can be traced to his many misunderstandings; he has tried to convince N’ba N’ga that life on land is superior, ignoring the reasons his uncle provides for living like a fish. Because he refuses to understand another way of life, he assumes that Lll thinks the same way, and so confronts her with this mistaken impression:

“‘Lll, I have to talk to you,’ I said as soon as I saw her, ‘you’ve been amusing yourself long enough. We have more important things ahead of us. I’ve discovered a passage in the mountains: beyond it stretches an immense stone plain, just abandoned by the water. We’ll be the first to settle there, we’ll populate unknown lands, you and I, and our children…The world belongs to those with legs, not to fish, and you know it.’” (81)

Once again, Qfwfq has failed to understand another’s intentions, and once again it results to some extent in lost love. He discovers that Lll, rather than agreeing with him that returning to the water is a step backwards, has come to share great-uncle N’ba N’ga’s point of view. Rather than making an effort to interpret her actions correctly, Qfwfq has interpreted them as what they would mean coming from him: a game, humouring his deluded uncle. He mentally superimposes the way he thinks of Lll over the way she really is, and he tries to make himself understood as being on a level with this imagined Lll without taking into account that she may have hidden depths. And this is Qfwfq’s great failing, his life’s downfall: he doesn’t realise that he’s misunderstood until it’s far too late.