SANTOS, Brazil – The city seemed to be asleep. The streets were empty, the shops were closed and a dog howled in the distance. Then, a few blocks away from the soccer stadium that put this port city on the map, there were signs of life. A lot of it.
Popcorn Vendors. Men grill meat. A group that sells T-shirts. And a hair salon that charges for the bathroom.
It was 3 a.m. and thousands of people were lined up in an orderly line about two-thirds of a mile, waiting for the body of one of history’s most magnificent athletes in the final moments before burial. Soccer star Pelé’s 24-hour vigil was in its 17th hour and from the looks of it, one day might not have been enough. The Santos football club estimated that 230,000 mourners had visited the stadium.
“This is not a sacrifice,” said Walter Henrique, 35, a tax analyst who traveled three hours to the wake and had to be at work in five, but had a few more hours before he would get through the line. “He gave us so much joy that it’s a pleasure to be here.”
The pre-dawn crowd in Santos had several reasons for arriving at such an hour. Mourners had clogged the roads from São Paulo, trapping many people in traffic. Some had come in late from work or wanted to avoid the midday sun. And still others had thought that if they came while the city was asleep, they would avoid the line.
“It wasn’t a good strategy,” said Vinícius Fortes, 58, a software engineer who arrived with his family at 1:15 a.m. local time to find a much longer line than expected. “I voted not to stay. I said, ‘Look, we’re going to wait two hours to be near a box for 10 seconds.’”
He was drowned out. Now his family had waited two hours and it looked like they still had an hour to go. “But every day you go home and sleep,” Fortes added. “This is a moment in your life that you will remember forever.”
Fortes’ 27-year-old son, Guilherme, was the only one who had to work in the morning, but he seemed unfazed, even when they read on the news that the line was cut for 30 minutes as officials changed the flowers. “I’ve made worse decisions in my life,” he said.
The mood was not exactly gloomy, but the crowd was sober. A street vendor, Ednalva Cruz da Silva, had a pile of booze on ice, including cans of Brahma beer and a bottle of Johnnie Walker whiskey, but no one partook. Instead, she sold water and soft drinks. “Usually it’s about 100 beers for every water,” she said. “That’s not supposed to be tonight.”
Still, the line got a little louder as the stadium approached. One group in particular led the way with chants for the Santos football team – which included references to the time in 1967 when Pelé’s presence led to a ceasefire in Nigeria’s civil war.
The group had become something of an attraction at an event where everyone was looking for a distraction. The nine men had met in line and bonded over the past three hours: a police officer, a supermarket clerk, three high school students, two chefs, a Rastafari carpenter with a soccer ball, and the owner of an industrial automation company in a ankle-length robe and headscarf. He had worn the outfit to the World Cup in Qatar, but had sewn a Santos patch on it hours earlier and now he posed for photos for hours on end.
“Pelé was the king,” said João de Souza, 58, the entrepreneur in the headscarf, who was wearing sunglasses at 3:30 am. “He showed the Brazilian spirit to the whole world, showed that Brazil has guts.”
Pedro Camargo de Souza, 17, a high school student in the group, said he traveled three hours on public transport to arrive. “I only came because I’m the only Santos fan in my family,” he said. “They thought I was crazy, but what were they going to do?”
As they approached the entrance, stadium officials ordered the group into single file and led them along. “Good evening,” said a messenger. “Or good morning.”
At 03:40 they walked through the gate onto the field. Silence fell over the crew. There was only the faint sound of Pelé singing a samba melody, “My Legacy,” a song he released in 2006 that was played repeatedly in the stadium as he lay in state.
Many of the men held up their phones to film the flowers; the banner that read “Long Live the King”; and the Jumbotron with an image of a crown.
Then, just as they approached Pele’s body in midfield – lying in a dark coffin, covered in flowers and draped in a veil – the silence broke into a roar of more than 100 men. It was one of the Santos fan clubs, who shouted a team chant, waved four huge flags and lit a flare in tribute next to Pelé’s coffin.
The nine men watched in awe, but the line kept moving. Within three minutes the group was back outside. “I cried,” said Camargo, the high school student. “I would do it ten more times, a thousand times. I would do it as often as Pelé scored.”
They met again next to a van selling grilled cheese sandwiches. They exchanged contacts and recapitulated the moment. Some were on their way home. Others remained on the streets or slept in their cars ahead of the funeral procession through the streets later that day, ending at the cemetery where Pelé’s coffin would be placed in an above-ground tomb.
“Now he rests in peace,” said João de Souza. “But his legacy, his dominion, shall be eternal.”