by Alex Bellos
By the stadium there is a patch of grass where a horse is grazing. A plinth makes the bold claim 'Fundamental Stone – Mane Garrincha Museum'. The museum was never built.
I ask a group of teenagers where Garrincha's family lives. They direct me to a house two blocks away. José Mário is sitting in his kitchen alone, drinking beer. He was married to Edenir, Garrincha and Nair's second daughter, who died of cancer in 1997. He says that all of Garrincha's daughters have left Pau Grande. He is very uncooperative and starts mentioning lawyers 'You journalists just write lies about him. Garrincha was the happiest man I ever knew.'
Beyond the factory, Pau Grande – which cannot have a population of more than a few thousand – rises steeply. I follow signs to Bar Mane Garrincha. Its location by a brook, in lush green forest, makes up for the functional building, which is a breeze-block hut with a painted caricature of a footballer on the front. The bar is run by Mazinho, Garrincha's nephew. He refuses to speak to me.
'We've given interviews for eighteen years and no one has ever given anything in return.'
Through asking around I manage to locate Rosa, Garrincha's elder sister. She is seventy-five and lives with her husband in a small one-bedroom home. They both worked at the factory and retired decades ago. They have never owned a phone and even if they could afford it would not be able to install one – since the lines have not yet reached that side of Pau Grande.
Rosa has nothing left referring to her brother, not even a photo on the wall. 'I had magazines, portraits, sashes, but people ask me for things. I gave everything away.'
She is pretty sure at least one of Garrincha's daughters still lives in Pau Grande. I leave and ask some more neighbours. One person tells me to go to the villa. I drive backwards and forwards down the same stretch of road looking for the villa until I realise it is a long building at the top of a stone path.
The villa is a bungalow with six rooms like student digs. Five people are sitting drinking beer out of plastic cups. One is the spitting image of Nair.
I approach her and introduce myself. She looks terrified. After a few tense seconds, she says her name is Nenel and she is Garrincha and Nair's second-youngest daughter. She remembers making her father coffee in the morning. Her real name is Terezinha but she prefers Nenel – that is the nickname he had for her.
Nenel grins a lot, revealing a hairlip and a smile of decaying teeth. She has big eyes, a long chin and ungroomed hair. The wretchedness of her home is shocking even without knowing who her father was. She lives in a room, no bigger than 2m by 2m, together with her twenty-two-year-old son. It has an old single bed, a big red fridge (full of beer) and a sink. A small TV is on, broadcasting an afternoon football match, although no one is paying it any attention.
I ask her if she has ever read Garrincha's biography. She says she's never seen it. From the way she replies I suspect she could not read a page of any book.
Her drinking buddies are about her age, and are a good-natured bunch – I assume not unrelated to the amount of beer they are consuming. Nenel used to work at the textile factory until it shut. She then had occasional work as a maid. I ask if she likes living in Pau Grande, without realising that she knows nothing else. Nenel lives ten miles from the beach. Yet she has never been.
It is a short drive to Raiz da Serra. The large Catholic graveyard is beautifully landscaped on the side of a hill, stacked full of stone and marble tombs.
At the summit stands a tall memorial stone with the words:
Garrincha
Joy of Pau Grande
Joy of Magé*
Joy of Brazil
Joy of the World.
And on a plaque underneath:
He was a sweet child
He spoke with the birds
The memorial is dated 1985, three years after Garrincha's death. Neither the largest nor best-positioned in the cemetery, it seems as much a tribute by Magé's mayor, Renato Cozzolino, to himself as it is to the deceased. Both of their names are as prominent.
Garrincha's gravestone is fifty yards away, down the hill, among the other graves. It is a simple slab marked with his name and dates. There are no flowers or any evidence that it has been cleaned recently. It is most conspicuous for its unobtrusiveness.
The grave is overshadowed by a much larger, white tombstone next to it. A pink porcelain vase and a plant pot with plastic yellow roses sit on top. I read the inscription. Miguel Campos was born a year before Garrincha. He died, aged twenty-five, in 1957. 'You will be missed by your mother, brothers and colleagues at Vila Atlético Clube,' it says. VAC's crest is in a metal plaque on the side of the tomb.
The comparison reinforces the private tragedy behind Garrincha's public success. The grave of an unknown footballer who played for an obscure local team is grander and better-looked after than the grave of the man whose dribbles twice won Brazil the World Cup.
In February 2002 the body of Nenel's son and Garrincha's grandson, Alexsandro Alves dos Santos, was discovered in Magé. He was twenty-one years old. It was unclear whether he had been murdered or run-over.
* After his bent legs, the most commented-upon part of Garrincha's anatomy was his penis. In 1959 a song with the chorus 'Mane, who was born in Pau Grande' was banned since it was too similar to 'Mane, who was born with a pau grande'-Brazilian slang for 'big dick'. A debate about the size of Garrincha's sexual organ ended up in the courts after Ruy Castro, his biographer, was sued for libel for writing that the footballer's penis was 25cm long. The judge ruled in Castro's favour: 'It should be noted that it is a matter of pride, at least in this country, to have a large member . . . Yet size and potency should not be confused. Brazilians dream of having both.'
* The electoral district of which Pau Grande is part.
Chapter Six
CARNIVAL WITH A TWIST
Ivaldo is fifty-six and a retired military policeman. With his black army crop, bushy white moustache and thick glasses, he looks like exactly the sort of officer who would pull you over for a minor traffic offence. He is, indeed, endowed with a laudable vindictive streak. When I meet him he is yelling a tirade of abuse. His neck muscles are taut and spittle is collecting in the corner of his mouth.
We are in Ilha do Retiro, the home ground of Recife club Sport. Ivaldo is standing at the front of the terraces, directly behind the visiting team's dugout. He is shouting non-stop obscenities at the visiting coach and players. It is difficult to make out what he is saying since he is accompanied by an unbearable noise. He has brought along an antique radio, which is rested on the waist-high wall in front of him. It is blaring at full volume. Like his own utterances, the radio is aimed at the visting team's bench. For the ninety minutes he never turns around to watch the football and only moves from his position when Sport score – to hold the radio above his head like a trophy and dance in a circle.
Ivaldo is dressed up in full Sport kit and has a sign hanging fom his neck with the name Ze do Radio, or Joe Radio. It is his alter ego. 'I am the only fan in the world who doesn't watch the match,' he boasts as the game is about to start. 'I just swear. Anything. Whatever comes into my head. But I am educated. After the match I go and apologise. It is all done in the spirit of playfulness. My ruse is part of folklore now. Someone even wanted to swap a car for my radio. But I'd never sell up. You can't get radios like these any more.' He has channelled his aggression into a big joke.
Joe's radio is a forty-year-old General Electric, cased in a black leather cover and with a handle like a suitcase. He used to bring it to games to listen to the live commentary, as is common practice in Brazil. But it weighs several kilos – far too heavy to hold in one hand by his ear. So he took it and rested it on the wall that separates the terrace from the pitch. 'I didn't put it there deliberately because of the noise. It was only afterwards I discovered that the noise really bothered the team,' he says. A policeman asked him to remove it. But Joe was a policeman too, and a stubborn one at that. He knew that radios were allowed in the stadium. Keeping his cum
bersome General Electric on the pitch-side wall became a matter of principle.
A famous coach once complained that Joe Radio's aural assaults made it impossible to communicate with his team. He tells me proudly that he has a certificate proclaiming him 'the most irritating fan in Brazil'.
There are other colourful characters at Ilha do Retiro. Fifty yards from Joe Radio I meet Dona Miriquinha. She is seventy-five and is dressed from head to toe in Sport's colours: black and red. She has never worn any other colour for twenty-five years. This time she has on a red bandana and a long red shirt with black lapels. She is quietly dancing around a red and black umbrella, like a starlet from a silent movie.
In England, characters like Joe Radio or Dona Miriquinha would be regarded as at best eccentric and at worst certifiable. In Brazil they are considered role models. Fans who exaggerate their passion are known as torcedores-simbolo-symbol fans-as if they are ambassadors for the passion and irreverence that everyone else feels.
Behind Dona Miriquinha is a brass band. They are playing a jazzy tune that they improvise for the length of the match. Sport's mascot is a lion and I see lion cuddly-toys and men in lion masks. It is like a family day out. I see many children, women and old people among the crowd, which is almost entirely dressed in black and red. As the game progresses the fans sing and jump up and down. Brazilians are naturally demonstrative people; never more so than when they are watching a game of football. They are loyal to the dictionary definition – the Brazilian Portuguese word for 'to support' is 'torcer', which means 'to bend or twist'. Its origin is related to the physical action involved. A supporter, a 'torcedor', is someone who bends and twists for his team.
This is what we expect. The exuberance and happiness of Brazilian fans is part of their football heritage. They are an all-singing, all-dancing mixture of races, sexes and ages. They are loud and colourful and always up for the party. Brazilians, the cliche dictates, have taken carnival to the football terraces.
It has also happened the other way around.
In 1931 Rio gained a new sports daily, Mundo Esportivo. Issue number one coincided with the finals of the Rio state football championship. In what was either an embarrassing lack of foresight or the inevitable teething problems of a new journalistic genre, there were no sporting events to write about for issue two. Mundo Esportivo had to look elsewhere to fill its pages.
At carnival time, Rio's black communities used to parade spontaneously through the city. There was already an informal competitiveness between the groups that took part. Mundo Esportivo seized the opportunity and turned the phenomenon into a fully-fledged tournament. The paper invented a list of categories and appointed a committee to judge them.
The event was so successful that it has been repeated every year since. It grew until it became the highlight of the festivities. Rio's world-famous carnival procession is, in fact, a hotly-disputed contest invented by ingenious football writers.
Mundo Esportivo was less durable. The paper shut down after eight months.
Mário Filho, the editor of Mundo Esportivo, was responsible not only for making carnival competitive but also for making football matches carnivalesque. He was the first person to encourage fans to turn the terraces into part of the spectacle. In 1934, when he was in charge of sport at O Globo, he launched a competition between supporters of Flamengo and Fluminense. He encouraged fans to bring drums, instruments, coloured streamers and fireworks to matches – with the winner the side that put on the most exhilarating display. Mário Filho's motivations were not especially philanthropic – he did so because it increased general interest in football, generated more copy and sold more papers.
He was uniquely placed to do this. Although only twenty-six years old at the time, Mário Filho was already the most influential sports journalist in Brazil. As a teenager he had started working for his father, a sensationalist press baron. Mário Filho, the precocious son, was made literary editor, sports editor and general manager. His father gave him free reign and he had begun to merge the jobs – bringing a business mind and a literary bent to the sports pages. Instead of just printing match reports, he experimented in hyping games, profiling players and creating a new, chatty journalistic style.
The match between Flamengo and Fluminense that had the supporters' competition he coined the 'Fla-Flu'. O Globo's pages spent all week building up to the game. It was such a success that more and more Fla-Flus were organised – the game is now Brazil's most famous local derby. The colourful exuberance of Brazilian football supporters may have happened without the help of Mário Filho. Yet he kicked it off.
Mário Filho blurred the line between journalist, novelist and businessman. He wrote about football matches in epic terms, creating a romantic mythology of players, clubs and games. The Fla-Flu he immortalised with most passion was the so-called Fla-Flu da Lagoa, or Lagoon Fla-Flu, which is worth mentioning for no other reason than it is a wonderful tale. It was the final match of the 1941 championship, played by Rio's Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon. Fla needed to win. For Flu a draw was good enough. With six minutes left, Fla brought scores level to 2-2. From that point whenever Fluminense gained possession of the ball, they whacked it into the lagoon. The ball had to be brought back, but as soon as it was Fluminense kicked it into the lagoon again. Flamengo put its rowing crews in the water to catch the balls. Each time the ball left the pitch the timekeeper stopped his watch. The six minutes dragged on until it got dark. Yet Flu held out and the championship was theirs.
Mário Filho had red hair and thick red eyebrows. He chainsmoked cigars and also puffed a pipe, which gave him the aura of a grandee. He became the grand homme of Rio sport, as famous as the sportsmen he was writing about and at least as influential as the club bosses. He was increasingly ambitious – both in his literary and entrepreneurial aspirations. He was the loudest campaigner for the construction of the Maracanã (which was given his name posthumously, in 1966). And he created the first ever transatlantic club competition, the Copa Rio, in 1951 and 1952, with top football clubs from South America and Europe. He was also taken seriously as a writer. Of his many books the most impressive is O Negro no Futebol Brasileiro, or The Black Man in Brazilian Football, a social history that in its day was considered one of the most original and significant works ever written in the country.
In his short story 'Carnaval na Primavera', or 'Carnival at Springtime', Mário Filho wrote that there was such a loud explosion at the start of the 1944 Rio state final that the duty policemen fell to the ground as if following war self-defence procedures. The bang was the result of a dynamite bomb made by the head of the Flamengo fans, Jayme de Carvalho. It was already common by the 1940s to salute your team with small gunpowder rockets. Jayme went one step further. He lit a bomb. It went off covering the stadium with smoke and destroying the grass where it landed on the touchline. At the end of the match, which Flamengo won, Jayme led an impromptu procession of Flamengo fans dancing and singing through the streets of Rio.
Jayme de Carvalho picked up from where Mário Filho left off. Once he was on the scene there was no need to encourage fans to be carnivalesque. He would take care of that himself. Jayme was a low-level state functionary, a job as anonymous as it was possible to get. Yet on the terraces he was a celebrity. He was always over the top. He dressed up in club colours and brought flags and banners. Since this type of merchandising was not commercially available, Jayme's wife Laura would spend her weekdays dyeing cloth red and black and sewing the material together.
In 1942 Jayme formed the Charanga, which means outof-tune-band, made up of friends playing brass instruments on the terraces. It was the first time organised music accompanied a team, and proved such a success that the idea spread all over country. Now a football match in Brazil without music is unthinkable. Flamengo began to sponsor the Charanga and even paid Jayme's expenses to travel with the team to a championship in Argentina.
Jayme was elected leader of the Brazilian fans during the 1950 World Cup. The Charanga
provided the musical accompaniment to the spontaneous rendition of 'Bullfights in Madrid' during Brazil vs. Spain, which was one of the best-remembered moments of the tournament.
With Jayme's help, throughout the 1940s the behaviour of Brazilian fans established itself as creative and theatrical. In São Paulo crowds would hold up different coloured cards to form an image visible at a distance – a technique that was popularised internationally decades later at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Brazil were streets ahead of the rest of the world. In 1948, when Southampton toured Brazil, a dispatch in the Southern Daily Echo reported on a firework display during the half-time period. 'What a queer idea!' it said. When I interviewed the veteran commentator Luiz Mendes, he told me that in 1949 he went to Europe for the first time. He covered Scotland vs. England at Hampden Park. 'I was very surprised,' he told me earnestly. 'Because none of the fans were in fancy dress.'
The Brazilian urge to dress up – which turns football terraces into carnivalesque blocks of colour – seems to be especially powerful because beneath the clothes there are few countries as racially diverse or socially unequal. Brazil has more blacks than any country outside Africa, more Japanese than any country outside Japan, as well as its indigenous Indians and large communities of northern Europeans, southern Europeans, Arabs and Jews. According to the United Nations in 2001, Brazil has the world's fourth most unfair distribution of wealth after Swaziland, South Africa and Nicaragua. The richest 20 per cent live comparably to countries in Europe; the poorest 20 per cent comparably to countries in Africa.
Wearing a uniform – such as a Flamengo shirt or a carnival costume – is a way of denying differences of race and class. In a crowd of people dressed in the same strip, it is easier to forget the violent differences that mark day-to-day life. Since football is the strongest symbol of national identity, wearing a football strip asserts a Utopian Brazilianness. Brazil feels like a country that works. Is it any wonder they put on a good show?