SPANISH BORDER

ACT I: The Big Room of a French jail near the Spanish border.
Mid-afternoon.

ACTION: A dozen men, all the men in the room, are gathered around something lying on the floor against the wall. At first we cannot see what it is. Gradually we realize it is a dead man.

HIGBY: (With a thick Cockney accent) He's dead all right. This bloody chow's what done him in.

RICO: (Italian accent) He was all right yesterday. All right this morning, too. What make him fall down all sudden like that?

HIGBY: All of a sudden is right!

JENKINS: Better off dead. Why don't somebody call the guards and get him out of here?

RODRIGO: Wait! Let's see if he is really dead. (He kneels down and begins to remove the man's clothing.)

HIGBY: What's the bloody idea of taking off all 'e's clothes, Mate?

RODRIGO: I want to feel his heart.

HIGBY: His heart ain't in his feet, is it?

JUAN: Let's see if he's got any cigarettes in his pockets.

RODRIGO: I looked already. None. (He searches in the man's shoe.)

RICO: I'm gonna call the guards.

RODRIGO: Wait a minute.

HIGBY: Say, you must have some special interest in that body. What's the idea, taking off his sox? You want 'em for yourself?

COHEN: (As RODRIGO throws a sox aside) Cheap sox! Two for a quarter.

JENKINS: You used to sell sox?

COHEN: Sure, in Soho.

JUAN: (As Rodrigo turns the body over) Aw, leave the little bastard alone.

SPANISH BORDER*-I-2

RODRIGO: Wait! Wait! (Frantically pulling off the other shoe.)

GYPSY: Sh-ss-ss-s!

JUAN: Guards coming anyhow.

(Everybody scatters, leaving the body except RODRIGO who still searches the clothing. As no one else is looking, he draws a crumpled paper from the shoe. Opens it quickly, then stuffs it in his own pocket.)

HIGBY: We gonna catch hell. That man dead. Clothes scattered all around. I had nothing to do with it myself.

JENKINS: You had as much to do with it as the rest of us. You got his hunk of bread in your pocket right now.

LONG: Damn a guy would eat a dead man's bread.

HIGBY: Shut your trap you, bloody deserter.

(Big rattles in latch. Door opens. Two GUARDS enter, with one eye shoving an AMERICAN/before them.)

GUARD: Les americains, xelax voila! Autre touriste americane pour vous. Entrez! (Giving the American a shove.)

JIM: (Looking around bewildered, then suddenly seeing the half naked body) What the hell! Am I in a morgue? Nom de dieu!

GUARD: (Suddenly seeing the body, too) Quesque c'est que ca?

2nd GUARD: What's thees? What matter thees man?

RODRIGO: The man's dead.

2nd GUARD: Get back, everybody against wall!

GUARD: (Kneeling over body) Il est bien mort!

2nd GUARD: What happened?

HIGBY: He just fell down, rolled a couple of times, dead!

GUARD: Il faut l'apporter en d'hors.

2nd GUARD: Allez appellez le chef de prison.

(GUARD exits)