The Believers

I couldn't yet understand Laila's love of Brasilia. "You're enchanted with . . . the street grid?" I asked. But both she and Andre were reluctant to make sweeping pronouncements. To truly grasp Brasilia's splendor, they said, I needed to consult the expert, Claudio Queiroz, their old professor at the University of Brasilia. Queiroz once worked with Costa, designing a set of office buildings that were never constructed, and for decades he has enjoyed an almost filial rapport with the ancient Niemeyer.

Queiroz is 61, but he practices capoeira; his neck muscles pop as he speaks. Through an interpreter he'd chosen himself for his "poetical" qualities, Queiroz spoke in grandiose phrases worthy of Milton: "Never in the history of mankind . . . The human condition is such that . . ."

Queiroz's message was simple: Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer are the cat's pajamas. Or, rather: "The construction of Brasilia was a basic moment of mankind. It was as though Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were working together, invoking Wittgenstein's maxim that aesthetics and ethics are one. Brasilia is the synthesis of all human knowledge."

I'd heard this argument before. It was premised on a '50s-era notion that culture is science, that citizens always do best when they leave, say, urban design to a few men of probity. Queiroz's wisdoms were yellowing and brittle; I tried to steer him onto more vital topics. But he did not answer my questions, exactly. When I asked about a newspaper report that Brasilia's concrete is now cracking in the dry heat, he went off on a tangent about the durability of the Pyramids in Egypt. "No other city has the beating heart of Brasilia," he concluded. "In 1985, when Lucio Costa made one of his last visits here, he took one look at the bus station downtown, at all the mixing of social classes there, and he said, 'At last! I have seen the fall of the Bastille!'"

I asked Queiroz how often he went to the bus station.

"Well," he laughed, "it is true -- it is not characteristic of someone of my social class to go there, but you can get these delicious sandwiches down at the terminal. I go at least twice a month."

Now I looked over at Andre, wearily. "You must be tired," I said. "Do you want to go now?"

"Oh no," said Andre. "Claudio is our teacher. And once someone is your teacher, they are always your teacher."

Queiroz talked, ultimately, for three hours, and as I sat there on a hard wooden chair listening, I looked out the studio's giant window and considered the lit-up office towers of Brasilia. The buildings were spare and nearly identical -- unadorned slabs with small, miserly windows -- and beside me, Claudio Queiroz kept droning on, droning on. The lifeblood of Brasilia, I believed, lay elsewhere.

The greatest joys in traveling are always serendipitous. One day in Brasilia, I was at a pool hall, and I heard a young man speaking English. As it turned out, 21-year-old Thomas de Almeida lives a few blocks from me in Portland, Ore. Black-haired and dashing, he wore a slender soul patch, a sliver of water buffalo horn in his ear, several tattoos and a long silver wallet chain that dangled rakishly from his black baggy trousers. He addressed me as "my home skillet Bill."

I had stumbled upon a reunion. Thomas was here to see his Brazilian father -- a journalist and singer/songwriter named Zeca de Almeida. The two men had not seen each other in more than a year, and they'd parted, the summer before, on bad terms. During a prolonged visit to Brazil, Thomas had begun smoking pot with dodgy characters; his dad kicked him out of the house. Now, though, a certain miracle had transpired -- Thomas had come back, from across the globe on an airplane, forgiving his father, wearing the goofy grin of a guileless kid.

"My son!" Zeca kept singing out between slugs of beer. "My son!" In the giddy blur of the evening, my own arrival on the scene (from Portland!) struck the de Almeidas as part of the magic. Zeca ordered up a third glass, so I could share their large bottle of beer.