Amazon Moon (23 page)
Jack:
"Male dominance is a curse on humanity, producing wars and violence, as well as rule of the 'haves' over the 'have-nots.' Unfortunately, it may be so deeply locked into our species that it never can be fully erased, no matter how many equality laws are passed. Sadly, when the Amazons rebelled, they had to employ male-style swords and spears, but it wasn't enough to save them from extinction."
Carolina:
"Yet, somehow, the Amazon image meets a need in us. Subconsciously we relish the thought of truly liberated women who fought for their own liberty."
* * *
After the London lecture, Jack and Carolina had a lull before their next appearance. Dr. Chichester invited them to his country cottage, where they mostly loafed. Curled together in bed with their bare legs entwined under the linens, they felt content and happy. Simple touching is vital to a good couple, along with all the other sharings of togetherness.
On lovely autumn afternoons, they took long walks through the rolling English countryside amid stone fences.
"Let's make a pledge," Jack declared as they sat under a yew tree, "that we'll never go sour on each other like the millions of sad couples who wind up in divorce or dreary, dead marriages."
"Of course, of course, but maybe those poor couples can't avoid it. Nobody chooses to be miserable, yet so many are."
"Well, I won't let it happen to us. You're the best thing in my life, and I'll hang onto you as tightly as Melos clung to Litha. Even if the world is full of stupid chaos, if ignorant armies clash by night, you and I make a safe refuge for each other."
When they returned to the cottage, old Chichester greeted them with tea and insight:
"I've been rereading the scribe's record. It underscores what we all know: that the great war between science and religion began in Ancient Greece. Classic Greek thinkers were the first to try to understand nature and life through observation and testing and logic. This put them at odds with priests and their supernatural explanations involving gods and miracles and afterworlds."
Carolina added: "Yes, but remember: about 1,500 years of limbo passed before the Greek ideas caught fire. The religious Dark Ages blanked out science like a shroud. Greek wisdom mostly was forgotten. The Renaissance didn't blossom until ancient Greek texts finally were brought west by Byzantine scholars fleeing Muslim invaders, and by some Muslim scholars who had preserved documents. That's when scientific thinking started to flower in the West, breaking the old grip of supernaturalism."
Next day, Chichester got an important phone call. The United Nations Commission on Women invited Jack and Carolina to speak at the World Summit for Women's Equality, scheduled two weeks hence at the European U.N. headquarters at Geneva. They were delighted to accept.
On the day before the summit, they jetted to Switzerland and were greeted as honored guests. U.N. officials showed them the stately Palace of Nations overlooking Lake Geneva, with its surrounding park dotted with peacocks. They were briefed on the upcoming sessions, which focused on the subjugation of women throughout history and in parts of the modern world. The printed program for the summit contained a statement from Amnesty International:
"In the United States, a woman is raped every six minutes; a woman is battered every 15 seconds. In North Africa, 6,000 women are genitally mutilated each day. This year, more than 15,000 women will be sold into sexual slavery in China. Two hundred women in Bangladesh will be horribly disfigured when their spurned husbands or suitors burn them with acid. More than 7,000 women in India will be murdered by their families and in-laws in disputes over dowries. Violence against women is rooted in a global culture of discrimination which denies women equal rights with men and which legitimizes the appropriation of women's bodies for individual gratification or political ends. Every year, violence in the home and the community devastates the lives of millions of women."
That grim summation set a solemn tone for the summit. All evening in their hotel room, Jack and Carolina polished their remarks. Next day, they stood together at the rostrum of the majestic assembly hall before a thousand delegates from two hundred nations. Again speaking alternately, they outlined the gross mistreatment of women in ancient Greece, which spawned the Amazons. During millennia that followed, the archeologists noted, neither religion nor male rulers raised females much above servitude. Then the Enlightenment brought a new age of human rights, leading to democracies that slowly mandated parity for women.
"However," Jack told the assembly, "although every Western society now has laws decreeing female equality, we all know that males mostly dominate. Laws haven't fully erased age-old inequality. Great progress has been made in advanced democracies, and women are flooding universities and the workplace, but they still aren't quite as free as men to plunge into the world and make their mark. And, as the Amnesty International statement spelled out, women in many lands remain vulnerable to abuse, sometimes subtle, sometimes barbaric."
Carolina shifted the topic slightly:
"Good couples who care deeply for each other can offset the unfairness. They work as a private team, making a shelter against the surrounding culture. That message shines clearly in the ancient account of Melos and Litha. The destruction of the Amazon colony didn't break their bond of love. They created their own nation of two, soon to be three. Nobody knows what happened to them: whether their child was born healthy, whether they were left unmolested in the vacant village, whether they lived long or short, whether they remained faithful to the end. All that is known is the words on parchment that lay undiscovered for more than two thousand years."
Jack concluded: "But it is enough."
* * *
When they returned to their hotel room, Jack stood by a large window, gazing at the great plane of Lake Geneva. He was in a heavy mood. Quietly he said:
"People live for a while, then they are gone. We're all moving toward death. That's the biggest fact of life, yet nobody seems to grasp it."
Carolina joined him and slid her hand around his waist. Arm-in-arm, they watched the vast water. Jack continued:
"Melos and Litha have been dead more than two thousand years. So why do we care about them? They were just one couple among a billion long-gone couples. To people today, it doesn't matter whether they were a loving pair, or whether they were cruel slaveowners, or priests sacrificing animals on altars, or warriors butchering people."
Carolina was silent, then slowly responded:
"It matters. In fact, how people live is the only thing that matters. Since life is temporary, we must try hard to make it good while we can. Litha and Melos lived in a bloody, crazy time, yet they wouldn't join the lunacy. They did their best to make a private shelter for each other. They found the most important truth of all."
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