Melbourne days

He sat opposite me on the tram, longish fraying hair of yellow and white, framing triangularly his delicate face. If he weren't all dressed up in vibrant colours, I would've mistaken him for one of those old tramps you see around in the city, always covered in dirty woollen pullovers and always carrying a big rucksack. But instead he looked like Santa Claus; a Santa in white and blue, not in December at Christmas, all red and snow, but at the end of May, around about the beginning of our winter - Here, all the way down, in the southern hemisphere, in the middle of a Melburnian tram trundling towards the outer suburbs. 

I reckoned he was coming back from a footy match, for his white and blue were the colors of the local club. The tram stops. People got on and off. Someone in the streets, a middle-aged lady, spotted the white-and-blue man - all matching scarf and jumper and beanie with a little knob at the top - and enquired from across the streets and into the tram, "Did we win!" It was a question but it wasn't really a question. There was palpable hope that his answer would be in the affirmative; there was an obstinate certainty that, Yes, they had won; there was an urgent desire that insisted on a Yes, they must have won; they must win. 

And Yes, the man replied, stretching his neck out, "We won!" 

The woman shouted something back, something of an exhilaration, unintelligible, for her words were overwhelmed by her own clear tenor of euphoria, as well as by the noisy, indifferent rumble of the tram that had started on its way again.