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Andreas' son Democritas, whose short hair and well-pressed neatness would certainly appeal to Agnew, has been deeply affected by his cousin's fame. "Now he has a name." says his father, "a dream to live up to." Democritas is a high school senior and has ambitions to be an accountant. He hopes to win the $1,000 scholarship that Agnew established in his grandfather's memory for the youth of Gargaliani.
Among the town's hierarchy, few rank higher than 85-year-old Andrew Chyrsikos, another of Spiro's cousins. He is what the Greeks call a "Beenamerican," meaning that he lived in America and returned home again. He sailed away, in fact, with Spiro's father, and they shared a room in Schenectady, N.Y., before Theodore Anagnostopoulos moved to Baltimore. Now, sunning himself outside the town library, Chyrsikos likes to one-up Andreas by boasting that his sons in America have visited with Agnew—and even had their pictures taken with President Nixon.
Of course, the most pressing question in Gargaliani—other than the outcome of the olive harvest—is when Spiro will come home. He has promised in letters to Andreas to visit the town, but the townspeople are beginning to wonder, in the shrewd fashion of peasants, why he waits so long. The delicacies of international politics that must concern their American cousin—the presence of a military junta in Athens, the absence of a constitutional Parliament—are not easily explained to the good people of sunny Gargaliani.