INTERPRETER- Have you ever killed a man?
MAN- No.
INTERPRETER- My son has. When he was a boy he was kidnapped by a guerilla group and they made him fight and kill.
MAN- Your son?
INTERPRETER- At age eight they took him far away from the village, to the jungle. There they put him in a ditch of dirty water for three days with nothing to eat and no sleep, then they branded him with a hot iron and for weeks they trained him to shoot all types of arms, and they also taught him to drive. Nothing scares him. He would defend you until death if necessary.

(Pause)

MAN- Has he killed many men?
INTERPRETER- For three years, he did nothing but engage in combat. They trained him never to be afraid of anything or anyone.
MAN- And how did he leave?
INTERPRETER- They left him gravely wounded and abandoned him in the jungle, thinking that he was dead. Days later the Red Cross found him. It was a miracle he came back to me. From then on, we’ve never been apart. This is the first time in many years that he’s gone so far from the village and I don’t want him to go back there.
MAN- And why doesn’t he look for a job here?
INTERPRETER- He wouldn’t know what to do all alone. Those three years with the guerilla group completely did away with his will. He needs someone at his side to tell him what to do.
MAN- My company already pays the police and the army to guarantee a better level of security.
INTERPRETER- You shouldn’t trust the soldiers and the police.
MAN- That’s why we pay them because we don’t trust anyone.

(Pause)

INTERPRETER- My son thought you were carrying a revolver under your sports jacket.
MAN- I have it from when I used to do business in the jungle.
INTERPRETER- But you don’t go to the jungle anymore to do business.
MAN- In this country you never know where the jungle begins and where it ends.
INTERPRETER- That means you’re afraid, you’re afraid someone will do you harm.
MAN- Maybe I am, but I also have pretty good aim with a revolver.
INTERPRETER- It’s not so easy to kill a man, especially the first time.
MAN- Have you also killed a man?
INTERPRETER- No, that’s what my son’s told me.

(Pause)

MAN- And what else has he told you...
INTERPRETER- My son? Things that would horrify you. For me, in the beginning they scared me so much that I thought that any night the spirit of one of those men, women or children that my son had killed would come for him. The first months after he came home I would spend the night at his side watching over him, until one night I was so overcome with fatigue that I fell asleep. At midnight I awoke to my son’s arm around my throat, like this… (He puts his own arm around his throat) and whispering in my ear in the darkness, I heard: Father, you don’t need to watch over me anymore, in the jungle I learned that there aren’t any spirits. Men live and die alone… If that’s what you really think, I answered him, I want you to kill me, too. I begged him to do it. Then he began to tighten his arm more and more until suddenly he let me go and went back to bed. (Pause. He takes his arm off his neck) The next morning he came to me, he asked for forgiveness and promised me that he would never harm anyone again.