Josef stares at Elena. She removes Hamilton’s blindfold.

ELENA: What did you tell her to say to the soldiers after you were all done with her?

Josef stares at Elena, then looks away.

JOSEF: Vola.[17]

Broken, Hamilton shakes his head.

ELENA: And then you ordered your soldiers to take out their knives and …

JOSEF: … i naordio som da seki izmerkeže njen žotrb. Po jadin strikar seki.[18]

ELENA: … and had them mark her stomach. One notch each.

Hamilton turns away from his father, disgusted.

Elena lifts up her shirt. There are thirteen stretched-out knife scars on her stomach.

ELENA: Then you patted me on the head and said, ‘You earned your stripes, kurvetino.’

HAMILTON: That can’t … You would’ve been a, a child …

Hamilton turns to his father.

ELENA: It was rather shrewd of your father not to mention her age.

JOSEF: Prekla si da je omrtvana.[19]

ELENA: It’s true, the Vajvotinja died in that camp … Whoever I was before that night, she has never come back. Now I am just an instrument, Butcher. (to Hamilton) Do you see, now, Marko?

Hamilton looks away.

ELENA: You’re right. There are no words. (beat) So what do we do with him now?

HAMILTON: You should – (about to say ‘kill’)

ELENA: Yes?

HAMILTON: … hand him over to Interpol. He should be tried in a court of law.

ELENA: Marko, Marko, Marko. I had such high hopes for you. Yet you cling to these outdated notions of … (sighs)

Fine. Let us, for the sake of argument, accept that we hand him over to the ICC. He will be tried for war crimes, yes? For crimes against humanity? (beat) How long, in your professional opinion, would his trial take?

Hamilton shrugs.

ELENA: Ballpark it.

HAMILTON: A few years …

ELENA: Two, three?

HAMILTON: Yes.

ELENA: Four, five? Ten?

HAMILTON: … Maybe, yes.

ELENA: So he’ll be eighty by the time he is convicted? And sentenced to, what? Life?

Hamilton nods.

ELENA: So they will send this eighty-year-old man to live out the rest of his life in a facility where he’ll have access to first-rate medical care and cable television.

This, to you, is justice?

Hamilton looks at Elena.

ELENA: How can you sit there and tell me, me, that this man deserves a fair trial, deserves to be treated with dignity? He has confessed, his guilt is not in question, and you yourself seem to agree that the crime is heinous …

HAMILTON: If you kill him, you become the very thing you are trying to destroy …

ELENA: Why do you insist on speaking the language of civilization in a world that has seen so little of it? (beat) Do you even understand what revenge is, Marko? It is the confession of pain. Not whispered to a priest, but bellowed for the world to hear. Why? Because it is generous: it wants you to feel what it feels. And unlike you, it speaks a language everyone can understand: fairness and hate.