Not a single person was looking at the paintings in the National Gallery. Everyone was staring at Mangogo.
At Layton’s side, the tiny African was admiring Thomas Gainsborough’s Mr. and Mrs. Andrews. The gentleman in the portrait wore an elegant gray topcoat and held a gun in the crook of his arm. Beside him, his young wife was resplendent in a sky-blue satin dress and dainty silver slippers. The couple was posed by a tree in the countryside, a building—likely their estate—in the background.
“Who are man and woman?” asked Mangogo.
“Mr. and Mrs. Andrews of Suffolk.”
“Mangogo tribe Mbuti. What tribe they?”
Layton laughed. “They belong to the English gentry. Big bosses in England. They, along with a tribe called the aristocracy, tell everyone what they should do.”
“Mbuti no have boss man. Everybody same, even woman.”
Layton found this interesting. Those persons the British would regard as savages had a more equal society than that belonging to Britons at home.
“Woman not look like can do much work, like hunt with net or get water. Can woman cook?” Mangogo asked, stepping forward to look at the painting more closely.
“No, women from that particular set are essentially useless,” Layton said, laughing. “They have servants to do all that.”
Mangogo sniffed. “Mbuti forest has many more…trees. So many you not see the sky.”
The professor had told Layton that Mangogo’s tribe was nomadic; they built temporary huts as they wandered the rain forest, hunting and foraging for food. They had an incredible knowledge of the land and how to live off it. Both men and women cared for the children, which was certainly different from England: no nannies for the Pygmies.
“Mbuti, children of forest. The forest is our god,” said Mangogo with great seriousness.
“Mr. and Mrs. Andrews belong to the Church of England,” Layton said. “Which means they don’t believe in anything, really.”
As they moved on to the next painting, a child approached Mangogo and asked, shyly, to shake his hand, to which the Pygmy heartily acquiesced. He even let the little boy hold his spear.
The Pygmy act had become a sensation in London, and Mangogo was its star. On the street, people would shout greetings or call out his name; one man asked to take a snap of him with his Kodak Brownie, another to rub his head for good luck, all to the great pleasure of Mangogo.
They paused in front of The Fighting Temeraire by J. M. W. Turner. The seascape showed a tugboat towing a famous ship, wrecked in the Battle of Trafalgar, to be broken up. At the right side blazed a magnificent sunset, all hot oranges and reds.
“Turner is one of England’s greatest painters,” Layton said. “Pictures of the sea were his favorite.”
“Our forest not have that much water. Much fish in there, yes?” asked Mangogo, pointing the tip of his spear at the grayish-blue waves.
“Indeed. That’s where your fish and chips come from.”
“Mmm. With HP Sauce…smashing,” said Mangogo, rubbing his little potbelly.
It was November, and the weather was beginning to cool. Mangogo wore a white shirt, minus the collar, under his burnt-orange blanket. Though he still refused pants, he now sported low-cut hobnail boots with thick leather soles, which clomped loudly on the wood floors of the exhibition rooms.
As Mangogo examined the Turner more closely, Layton drew out his watch. He had tried to teach his African friend to tell time, but the Pygmies knew only the rhythms of sunrises and sunsets. “Elevenses,” he said, tucking his watch away. “Time for tea.”
They found a teashop on the Strand near Charing Cross Station. The proprietor, a prim-looking lady with spectacles, was at first alarmed, but when two customers called out Mangogo’s name—fondly, as though he were an old classmate from Oxford—she relaxed and showed them to a table.
“Thank you, madam,” said Mangogo in a loud, clear voice, startling the woman.
A timid waitress brought their tea, backing away as soon as she’d set down the plates. Mangogo nodded to her and smiled, then dug into a scone, upon which he heaped a large serving of butter. Whenever they took tea together, he insisted on pouring as Layton had taught him, the way the upper classes did: tea first, then milk and sugar—never put the milk in first!
Layton watched as Mangogo carefully stirred his tea. I’m turning him into an upper-class Englishman, he thought with a jolt of amusement. Like he had done with himself.
A man and his wife came up to Mangogo to shake his hand. He stood up and bowed to the woman, to her delight.
“Do you miss the food of the forest?” the man asked.
Mangogo swallowed his mouthful of scone before answering. He no longer chewed with his mouth open.
“Yes, no antelope or chakka leaves in England,” he said, a touch of sadness in his voice. “But like Marmite. Remind me of beetcha. Mashed beetle pulp.”
Marmite, a thick, brown paste made of yeast that Englishmen smeared on toast, was another delicacy invented during Layton’s time in prison. All the Pygmies in the troupe loved it and ate it right out of the jar, using their fingers as spoons.
The more he got to know Mangogo and the more he enjoyed the little man’s company, the more Layton ached to help him adjust to his new life. Backstage one night, the professor had told him a sad story; now Layton struggled to get it out of his mind.
Years ago, in 1903, an American explorer had brought a Pygmy from the Central African rain forest back to the United States to be displayed in the monkey cage at New York’s Bronx Zoo. Forty thousand people a day had come to see him. But one morning, the zookeeper had found the Pygmy dead. He’d hanged himself with strips torn from his blanket. At the thought of this being Mangogo’s fate, a shudder rippled through Layton.
Of course, while it was true that Cissie and the circuit were making a packet off the Pygmy act, they weren’t treating them like zoo animals. A share of the profits had even been put aside for them, though they had no concept of money; to Mangogo, a monkey hide for barter was far more valuable than any coin or pound note. Marmite was even more valuable. While Cissie had found them a flat in Southbank, most of the time, the troupe stayed in the cellar below stage. It reminded them, Mangogo said, of their dark, windowless huts at home.
“Owen heartsick,” announced Mangogo out of the blue.
“Why the deuce would you say that?” Layton said with an astonished smile.
“Mangogo know.” His voice was grave, and he wasn’t smiling.
His concern touched Layton.
“Do the children of the forest read minds?” he asked gently, impressed by his friend’s perspicacity. Despite his troubles, he tried to always be jolly when with Mangogo. And all the time he spent with him, he enjoyed himself so much that he forgot his woes for a while.
“Read minds?” Mangogo repeated.
Smiling, Layton took his finger and drew an invisible line from the Pygmy’s forehead to his own.
Mangogo nodded. “Yes. We know what animal think—like viper and leopard.”
“And I’m unhappy?”
“Owen in Queer Street,” he said. “Why?”
He was right; Layton was in trouble. An incredible urge to tell Mangogo everything surged up inside Layton. But he held his tongue. He didn’t want to endanger his friend. Besides, it was a complicated story, and Mangogo might not understand. Or if he did, he might do something rash. Unlike the British, who were masters of repressed emotion, the Pygmies acted on impulse if loyalty demanded it.
“No, I’m in no trouble. I am right as rain, I assure you.”
Mangogo shook his head. “Bollocks,” he said, repeating a word he’d heard many times from Cissie. It suited him.
Layton exploded with laughter.
“Mangogo keen as mustard to help.” He rummaged inside the leather pouch he wore always around his neck. Removing what looked like a piece of blackish-gray tree bark, about seven inches long and five inches wide, he held it out to Layton. “Loktiki tree—big magic,” he said excitedly and broke off a piece.
Layton plucked it from the palm of the African’s bony little hand and clutched it tight. “Well, thank you,” he said. Touched by this kind gesture, he made to put it in his side coat pocket.
“Eat,” Mangogo insisted, making a chewing motion with his teeth.
Layton hesitated, then smiled and put the bark in his mouth. His first sensation was that this was the closest he’d ever come to eating feces. He swallowed, trying to disguise his grimace of disgust.
“Owen keep pecker up—bad will go away. More tea, white British chap?” asked Mangogo, as politely as any upper-class matron. He lifted the white-bone china pot, ready to pour.