defended themselves against his advances. Cain decided to stop beating about the bush and come straight to the point, So what are you making, what is it, a boat, an ark, a house, he asked. The oldest member of the group, a tall man, as strong as samson, said only, It's not a house, And it's not an ark either, said cain, because arks always have lids, and if this thing had a lid, no amount of human strength could lift it. The man did not respond and made as if to move away, but cain stopped him at the last moment, If it isn't a house and it isn't an ark, then it must be a boat, he said, Don't answer him, noah, said the older of the four women, the lord will be angry with you if you talk too much. The man nodded and said to cain, We have a lot to do and you're distracting us from our work, please leave us alone and go on your way, adding in a slightly threatening tone, As you can see, there are four strong men here, myself and my sons, Fine, replied cain, it would seem that the old rules of mesopotamian hospitality, which have always been respected in our land, have lost all value for the family of noah. At that precise moment, the lord appeared, with a deafening roll of thunder and accompanying pyrotechnics. He was wearing his work clothes, rather than the usual luxurious vestments that he could always rely on to reduce those whom he wanted to impress to immediate obedience without having to resort to divine dialectic. Noah and his family immediately prostrated themselves on the ground, which was covered in wood shavings, while the lord looked at cain in some surprise and asked, What are you doing here, I haven't seen you since the day you killed your brother, That's where you're wrong, lord, we did see each other, only you didn't recognise me, in abraham's tent by the oaks of mamre, before you destroyed sodom, An excellent piece of work that, clean and efficient, and more importantly, definitive, There's nothing definitive in the world you created, poor job thought he was safe from all misfortunes, but your wager with satan brought him poverty and made of his body a running sore, at least that was how he was when I left the land of uz, Not any more, cain, not any more, his skin has healed completely and his herds and flocks have doubled, now he has fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand asses, And how did he manage that, He bowed to my authority, he recognised that my power is absolute, limitless, that the only person I have to account to is myself, that I never have to concern myself with considerations of a personal nature, and that I am endowed, let me say this to you now, with a conscience so flexible that it agrees with whatever I do, And what about job's children, who died beneath the rubble of a house, A minor detail of little importance, he'll have another ten children, seven boys and three girls, to replace the ten he lost, Just like the animals, Exactly, after all, children are the same as flocks, nothing more. Noah and his family had got up from the ground now and were listening in astonishment to the dialogue between the lord and cain, which resembled that of two old friends meeting again after a long separation. You haven't told me what you came here to do, Oh, nothing special, lord, besides, I didn't come here, I found myself here, Just as you found yourself in sodom and in the land of uz, And at mount sinai, and in jericho, and at the tower of babel and in the land of nod, and at the sacrifice of isaac, You've done a lot of travelling, Indeed, lord, but it was not of my own choosing, I even wondered if these constant changes that have taken me from one present to another, now in the past, now in the future, were not your work too, No, it's nothing to do with me, such primitive skills, such tricks intended to epater le bourgeois, are beyond me, time does not exist for me, So you admit, then, that there is another force in the universe, different from and more powerful than yours, It's possible, but I'm not in the habit of indulging in such idle speculations, one thing is certain, though, you cannot leave this valley, and I would advise you not to try, from now on, each exit will be guarded by two cherubim bearing flaming swords and with orders to kill anyone who approaches, Like the angel you placed at the gates of eden, How do you know about that, My parents often spoke about him. God turned to noah and asked, Have you told this man what the boat is for, No, lord, may my tongue fall from my mouth if I lie, my family are my witnesses, You are a loyal servant, I did well to choose you, Thank you, lord, now, if you don't mind my asking, what should I do with this man, Take him with you on the boat and make him one of your family, that way you will have another man to give your daughters-in-law babies, their husbands won't mind, I hope, They won't, I promise, and I will do my best as well, for old as I am, I'm not so old as to turn up my nose at a good-looking woman. Cain decided to intervene, Would you mind telling me what you're talking about, he asked, and the lord responded as if repeating a speech he had given before and knew by heart, The earth is corrupt and filled with violence, I find in it only corruption, for all its inhabitants have strayed from the path, the wickedness of man is great, every thought and desire incline always and constantly towards evil, I repent ever having created man, for he has grieved me to the heart, the end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, I will destroy them along with the earth, I have chosen you, noah, to start a new race, which is why I have ordered you to build an ark of gopher wood, and to make rooms in the ark, and to cover it inside and out with pitch, I commanded you to make it three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits in breadth, and thirty cubits high and to make a window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and to set the door of the ark in its side, and to make it with lower, second, and third decks, for I am going to bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which there is the breath of life under heaven, everything that is on the earth will die, but I will establish my covenant with you, noah, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife and your sons' wives with you, and of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you, male and female, be they birds, quadrupeds or other animals, you must also take with you the different kinds of food eaten by each species, and store it up to serve as provisions for you and for them. This was the lord's speech. Then cain said, A vessel of that size and so heavily laden will never float, when the valley begins to flood, no amount of water will be enough to lift the ark off the ground, everyone will drown and the hoped-for salvation will turn out to have been a mousetrap, Not according to my calculations, said the lord, Your calculations are wrong, a boat should be built next to water, not in a valley surrounded by mountains at a vast distance from the sea, normally, when you finish building a boat, you carry it down to the water, and it's the sea itself or the river, if you're by a river, that lifts the boat, you don't seem to realise that the reason a boat floats is because any object partially or wholly submerged in a fluid experiences an upward impulse equal to the weight of the volume of fluid dislodged, it's the archimedes principle, May I give my opinion, lord, asked noah, Speak, said god, who was clearly much put out, Cain is right, lord, if we wait here for the water to lift us, we will all end up drowned and there will be no new human race. Furrowing his brow in thought, the lord considered the matter and finally came to the same conclusion, all that work to invent a valley that had never existed before, and for nothing. Then he said, I have a solution, when the ark is ready, I will send my worker angels to carry it through the air to the nearest bit of sea, It's very heavy, lord, the angels won't be able to lift it, You don't know how strong my angels are, they can lift a mountain on one finger, fortunately, they're highly disciplined, otherwise they might easily have organised a plot to depose me, Like satan, said cain, Yes, like satan, but I've found a way of keeping him sweet, I give him a victim to amuse himself with now and then, and that seems to satisfy him, Just as you did with job, who didn't dare to curse you, but who carries all the bitterness of the world in his heart, What do you know of job's heart, Nothing, but I know all about mine and a little about yours, retorted cain, Oh, I doubt that, we gods are like bottomless wells, if you lean over us, you won't even see your own image reflected back, Eventually, all wells dry up, and your hour will come as well. The lord did not reply to this, but he looked very hard at cain and said, That mark on your forehead has grown bigger, it looks like a black sun rising up above the horizon of your eyes, Bravo, cried cain, applauding, I had no idea you went in for poetry, There, you see, you know absolutely nothing about me. With this aggrieved comment, god departed far more discreetly than he had arrived, by simply vanishing into another dimension.
Prompted by a discussion in which, in the opinion of any impartial observer, he had not cut the finest of figures, the lord decided to change his plan. Destroying humanity wasn't what you could call an urgent task, the inevitable extinction of that man-beast could wait another two or three or even ten centuries, but having made the decision, he felt a kind of tingling in his fingertips, which was a sign of grave impatience. He decided, therefore, to mobilise his legion of worker angels with immediate effect, and instead of just using them to carry the ark to the sea as he had now decided to do, he ordered them to help noah's exhausted family whose labours, as anyone could see, had left them more dead than alive. A few days later, the angels arrived, in ranks of three, and set to work at once. The lord was not exaggerating when he boasted about how strong his angels were, you only had to see how easily they picked up a thick plank under one arm, as if it were the evening paper, and carried it, if necessary, from one end of the ark to the other, three hundred cubits or, in modern measurements, nearly five hundred feet, almost the length of an aircraft carrier. The most surprising thing, though, was the way in which they hammered the nails into the wood. They didn't use a hammer, they simply put the nail in place, point downwards, and hit the head hard with their fist, and the nail would slide easily in, as if the extremely hard wood were butter in summer. Watching them plane a plank was even more amazing, they would simply run the palm of their hand back and forth, without producing any shavings or even a hint of sawdust, until the plank was the desired thickness. And if they had to make a hole for a dowel, they just used their forefinger. It was a real
