“I’ve got only one chance to escape detection,” he said. “Let me play your role tonight. In the clown costume of Pagliacci they’ll never recognize me. They’ll just think I’m the regular tenor.”
“Not if you sing as you used to,” Enrico smiled. “You must be sure to sing very badly. Then you will sound like me.”
“Perhaps the audience will know the difference,” Dick said, “but I’ll have to take a chance on that. Even if they do, maybe they will say nothing.”
“They will say nothing,” Enrico assured him. “They will know you are the American for whom the Germans search, and they will want to help you.”
“What about those among you who work with the Germans?” Dick asked. “There are still some quislings, I believe.”
“Yes, but they dare not come to public gatherings like this,” Enrico said. “They are afraid of the rest of the townspeople.”
“All right then?” Dick asked.
“All right,” Enrico replied. “Come to my dressing room now. The others in the company must be told. They can be trusted, all of them. I shall tell them while you get into costume and make-up. Then I shall join the orchestra in the pit and play a drum inconspicuously.”
In a few minutes Dick was putting the clown costume over his clothes. The floppy suit was so roomy that he was able to tie the Gestapo uniform around his waist beneath it. Then he smeared over his face the heavy dead-white make-up of the clown. When it dried, he put on his wig, and then the round red spots which covered the clown’s face. He looked at himself in the cracked mirror.
“A mother couldn’t recognize her own son in this get-up,” he laughed. “I may be able to get away with this.”