Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There are strange friendships: two friends almost want to devour each other, and they spend their entire lives living that way, but meanwhile they cannot part. There is not even a way they can part: the one who takes to acting up and breaks the tie will be the first to fall sick and perhaps die, if that should happen.

I know for a fact that on several occasions, Stepan Trofimovich, sometimes even after the most intimate effusions to Varvara Petrovna in private, would suddenly jump up from the sofa as soon as she left and begin beating his fists against the wall. All this happened quite literally, even to the point where he once broke some plaster off the wall.

People may ask: How could I have learned such a tiny detail? And what if I had witnessed it myself? What if Stepan Trofimovich himself had more than once sobbed on my shoulder, depicting all the ins and outs for me in the brightest colours? (And there wasn't a thing he didn't tell me on these occasions!)


Translated from Russian by Robert A Maguire.