I was stuck with six men all screaming at the same time, and it was impossible to make them realize, individually or collectively, that they were idiots who had misunderstood me in the stupidest way. So I asked if I could offer them an example of what I meant: “Let’s assume that a man shows up at a radio station and claims that God is calling him. His name is Niels Otto Alsen, and he usually introduces himself by his initials: N.O.A. God’s voice is calling him, N.O.A., because a new flood is imminent. He says it’s high time to warn mankind. The radio station has to broadcast the news that the deluge is about to come and that people have to prepare for it. Needless to say, they think he’s a fool and kick him out. But an intellectual who’s hanging around the editorial office goes after him and maliciously points out the problem: if God has elected him, N.O.A., to be told of his intentions, it is because he is the only righteous man among millions of doomed sinners. He must not act more humane than God Himself. God won’t stand for it. Assuming the radio station really did broadcast a warning, the resulting panic would have consequences more catastrophic than the worst deluge. So: if the LORD intends to destroy humanity but for one righteous man, then he, this one righteous man, should not interfere with HIS workings. It is his duty to build an ark, fill it with two of every living creature, and wait until God has done His destructive work in order to begin the world anew on His behalf. Period. That is the ‘what if.’ The problem confronting a modern-day Noah becomes dramatic now. Where and how will he start his rescue action? How should he populate his boat? He can grab his neighbor’s cat from the windowsill, but things get tougher with the other fauna. There are several hundred species of finch; where’s he going to get a pair of each? Where’s he going to find lions, rhinoceroses, elephants? What kind of tools should he take for a new mankind? A knife, a cigarette lighter, an encyclopedia? But each of these contains the seed of new sins. Besides, this is 1947, and where and how is he going to get rationing stamps for the wood and nails for his boat? Wouldn’t he, the only righteous man in God’s eyes, have to commit all sorts of legal offenses in order to carry out God’s mission? And so forth . . .”

but I couldn’t get any further. I couldn’t demonstrate that this story too could not be told beyond this point because it has no end, it expands like a fan, but without moving, without coming to a dramatic point, without making the conflict clearer than it already is—

I couldn’t do it, because they all leaped on me at once and shouted at the top of their lungs: a solution at last, the idea was wonderful, much more plausible, much more symbolic than Nagel’s story. Stoffel jumped to his feet and gave one of his conference speeches: “Well, gentlemen, dear Astrid, I believe the solution has come to us from an unexpected source. Here we finally have the film we want, which will liberate the problem of our times from the eternal German guilt complex and raise it beyond the actual German situation to a universal human level . . .” And with that he opened a bottle of champagne, which back then was a great rarity on the black market.