AMONG THE ANGELIC ORDERS
207
But Melvin didn't like
it
at all. "I don't see anything very much
in that. I mean, it's simply the genetic symbol for the female–
heredity-Mendel-" he elaborated.
"Genetics!" Sheila snorted lightly. She looked at Melvin with
pity for his lack of the finer comprehensions. She almost made Gret–
chen feel responsible-Simeon, after
all,
had said nothing silly like
that.
"But you don't understand. It's not that at all- it has nothing
to do with-" But Gretchen trailed off. She had never thought of
that connection before. The dark young man was looking at the
ankh and not liking what they made of it at
all.
She had not thought
someone of their own generation could be so remote from them, from
her and Sheila. But, indeed, age is not the only barrier to perfect
communion.
"No, the symbol had priority, even if the Egyptians used it for
a different purpose," said Simeon the peacemaker. "Besides, you
know, Egyptian science was highly developed." It was as if he were
mediating between the sexes:
Melvin looked blankly at them. "That was astronomy anyhow.
But those old symbols- but I don't see what difference it makes to
you. You're not Egyptians, I'm not Egyptian." He was very serious
about it. Evidently he had not encountered any folk-dance group or
any myth and ritual people at Brooklyn College.
Gretchen and Sheila looked at each other. Did he think
they
were Egyptians? Or that they thought they were?
"But," Sheila started radiantly, "it has nothing to do with
be–
ing Egyptian. It's a symbol of life. I'm alive, you're alive-" and
so she explained symbolism to him in her gentle evangelical way,
helped out by the cosmopolitan Simeon. They got rather far from
genetics.
Gretchen looked hard at the ankh, turning slightly away from
her friend's dispute, squinting in order to get a better view of that
object in the glass case. She was trying to remember all the things
they used to say about the ankh. But
it
said nothing to her, it was
simply itself. Gretchen of course was not an Egyptian, but she had
never thought that mattered. Then neither had she ever thought that
sex mattered-for the ankh, that is. And now she was naturally con–
fused. Which was it, life or sex? It had to be one or the other, she
