The station wall is also red and the stone floor along the platform grey. The  white-washed steps along the edge of the platform,, shine with a wet brightness as though they were the side planks of a ship emerging from the sea.

"Not a ship; rather lovely, old stables," said a girl sitting on the steps. "Look at the windows. But of course there are no animals here."

"Yes, there are," said a boy shaking his head. He was sitting near the girl, with an old green, rucksack strapped on his back. "A deer has a brain big enough to tan its skin."

"Its skin?" asked the girl pulling her feet back as though she had put them in cold water.

The boy didn't answer, but just watched the air quivering above the rails.

They had been sitting on the steps for over two hours and still didn't know each other's names. When the girl had appeared at the station fence carrying her shoes and with wet trousers, the legs rolled-up, he had been there sitting on the white steps.

"The stone will hurt your feet," he said.

"No it won't," she answered, carefully walking on the hot stone.

"Actually, it's a piece of Indian wisdom about deer and their skin," said the boy later. "It means nothing in the world just happens, nothing is as it is without reason."

"I just happen to be here," she answered.

The afternoon was almost spent, the rails slowly lost their silver hue like mercury and the croaking of frogs on the banks of the river was getting increasingly loud.

"My family at home can't begin to imagine what I'm doing," the boy said to himself smiling. "They're in Kaposvár."

"That's only seventy kilometres away; not that far."

At the other end of the station in a siding was an open wagon laden with fresh-smelling pine logs.

"Before we go let's scratch our names on the wall," the girl said. "There above the slanting drain pipe."

The boy put his rucksack down, went to the side of the building, and, picking up a rusty nail, scratched on the wall leaving enough space for the girl his Christian name and the initial of his surname: ‘Péter K.'.

The girl scratched ‘Mila K.'

"A Croatian name," said the boy. He didn't ask her, he just spoke to himself. He added a plus sign between the two names: ‘Péter + Mila', and, looking at the girl, drew a heart round them.

"People will think lovers were here waiting for a southbound train," said the girl smiling.

Night was falling and the horizon turned red like the wall of the station. At this time, the river looms silver as though it were rails running into infinity along the line of the trees. The old lamp just above the inscription on the wall of the station came on. The wobbly letters freshly scratched into the bricks glowed rough and vivid - and of course alongside, what was drawn round them, the heart.