Edegbe felt that he too would never forget, the same way he would never forget the woman whose child had died, whose mournful dance was striking. His stroll back to his house was with a nostalgic slowness and he was glad that Efe had returned.
"Did you plan on sleeping in the gym?" He asked, standing by the entrance to his room, the door half opened.
"If I planned on it, then I wouldn't be here." He was lying on this bed, his leg dangling on air. He wore a different clothes from what he had worn to the gym so Edegbe took it that he had taken his bath. "Victor told me how much you missed me, crying and rolling on the floor that I should come back quickly else you would die."
"It's either Victor has suddenly turned senseless or you've lost more than one nut from your head."
He chuckled. "I'm tired as it is. You can either leave or make yourself useful by coming in to give me a massage."
He shook his head. "You have really lost that nut." He closed the door and went to his room.
Edegbe willed five months to come in a blur, he wanted the day he would see rice to come quickly because he was prepared. And excited. If the yields were good, and it looked like they were, he would buy more lands and by the end of the year he would be bagging rice to sell in Benin for a ten thousand. He drank to that. He was going to spend, at least, four years in the North, after which he would move back to south, leaving his business in trusted hands the way he did in Benin. All the plans were made and all the efforts in place, now he just had to wait. So he waited, counting the days, willing them to quickly turn into night and the night day again. He prayed the days would quickly merge into a week and the weeks would leave a synchronous pile of months so that five months would come in a blur.
Three months into the five and he was ecstatic, he would visit the farm everyday, if Efe was not able to convince him otherwise, and touch the leaves. He refused to touch the fruit, told everybody not to touch the fruits.
He door to his study slided and it broke through his reverie, he opened his eyes.
"Do you miss me so much that you now want to spend your evening with me? For the past three months you've been avoiding me like a plague." He joked as Efe appeared, looking tensed.
"I wish that was the case, Sir."
The honorific had Edegbe at alert, he looked at the phone Efe was clutching as if he wanted it to break, askance. "Have you done anything worse than throwing a woman's letter out of the window?"
"The agriculturalist called, herdsmen supposedly grazed on your farmland, everything is gone." That was not how Efe planned on saying it, but he hadn't even planned anything.
Edegbe blinked. "What did you say?"
"The agriculturalist called, herdsmen supposedly grazed on your farmland, everything is gone," he repeated, like a broken record.
It took a minute for the words to sink. Edegbe stood up, screeching the chair. "Herdsmen? Grazed on my farmland?" He was looking at Efe as though he could not recognize him. "Are you trying to make a joke or something?"
"He just called," Efe said, gesturing to his phone, as if that Mr Tanko just called would make the situation less maddening.
"What do you mean he just called?"
Efe wondered why the man hadn't called Edegbe instead. When he had called, Efe felt a drop in his stomach imagining how ballistic Edegbe would go "He said—"
"Do I pay you and do I pay him to give me excuses? I pay you and I pay him to keep things like herdsmen in check and now you come in here to say security was broken into? This had better been a late April fool." He marched out of the office.
Efe hoped so too as he followed him.
Victor looked at them with the worse confusion ever, but when Edegbe told him to drive the car, he knew the voice of an angry man enough not to argue. "Where are we going to, sah?"
"You're asking me? Are you normal? Can't you people think? In fact, get out of the car and get out of my house let me drive."
"Sir, that's a bad idea." Efe stopped him.
"Are you crazy?"
"I understand that you're angry—" Edegbe doubted he did, it was easy for him to say he understood when it hadn't been him who waited in excitement, and whose excitement they were going to shatter. "— but if you're going to vent your anger, you need to be alive and I don't see either of us staying alive if you handle that steering. Sir, please sit down and allow the driver do his job."
"I have been doing that for the last three months and I just realized with a great sacrifice how incompetent my employees are." But he went back to the car to seat and Efe told Victor, who looked scared enough to pee on himself, they were going to the farm.
The farm which once had the pasture of a nature filled greeness, now looked like what remained from an orderly trimmed carpet grass, as if the cattles had been told to graze as much as they wanted to as long as they remained enough to cover the ground. The orderliness angered Edegbe more than the actual offense did.
"It's the sticks, sir," Mr Tanko said, pointing to them as they laid flatly on the ground. "They were not enough to hold the mback. I had suggested that we built a fence, but you—"
"And so it's my fault?" He turned his attention on the man, attacking him. Efe and Victor had shifted to a corner. "It's my fault that you did not tell me herdsmen is a thing here?"
Mr Tanko looked at him in genuine surprise, the same surprise the man who had asked Edegbe for a packet of condoms had. "But, sir, this is the north, everybody knows this is how these herdsmen behave."
"Everybody knows?" He asked. "Then everybody is stupid. Just look at you, for an instance, you've been in this business for a very long time now but you're still not clairvoyant enough to know that something like this will happen. You don't know anything, the only thing you northerners do so well is pray and leave a dirty mark on your forehead. But, at least, your god should give you sense."
A scowl appeared on the agriculturalist's face that made him look ugly. "Sir, please don't insult my religion, what happened here does not have anything to do with my religion."
"Can you hear yourself? What happened here has nothing to do with your religion? You know what? Get out of my farm, I can't work with incompetent idiots, get out!" He was pointing to the entrance with a finger shaken by anger. "I won't let this slide, I'm going to report to the police."
"You want to report an Hausa man to an Hausa man, you, who is not Hausa? These people do brother-brother too much," Victor managed to say. "And you don't even know which herdsman it is, what are you going to tell the police, there's no herdsman, no cow, and you've sacked your worker."
Edegbe looked at him like he had not expected him to speak, and thus, was stupefied that he actually made sense. He opened his palm. "Give me the keys."
Victor took it out from his pocket and gave it to him.
"The both of you should trek. And, you, Victor, when you get back, pack your bag and go back to Sabon Tasha where you belong, I can't keep paying and housing incompetency."
Efe waited until the car was roared out of the premises before he threw his head back and laughed.
"But I did not do anything," Victor complained, at the verge of crying. "Sah, why are you laughing? We should go and beg him."
"He said to trek, if we go now he would know we did not trek."
"But why is he angry at me? Am I the cow that ate his rice. Hei, God! I can't go back to Sabon Tasha. Sah, please let's go and beg him."
"If Edegbe sees you in that house now, he's going to throw your things outside." He looked around the farmland and groaned. "What kind of bad luck is this?"
Edegbe honked until somebody knocked on his window, a displeased look on his face, and told him to stop. Crazy Muslims! He had forgotten it was Friday and that they had their rituals on Fridays. Stupid northerners! He understood their need to pray, what he did not understand was why they did it on the road, disrupting traffic. Now, he was angry and stuck, both for justifiable reasons. He had been waiting expectantly for months but what? Fulani herdsmen? God forsaken Fulani herdsmen! And how dared Mr Tanko try to blame him? Yes, he had refused building brick fences for the main time because he had plans of acquiring more lands and didn't want to waste his money building, destroying and rebuilding. But of course, that was because he did not know encroachment of cattles was a norm. And now, he had lost everything, he honked again. The man knocked on the window again and threatened to burn his car if he did it again, he gave the man a middle finger and the man, in his kaftan and kufi cap embroidered on with what resembled quality thread, gave his window a fistful bang and Edegbe feared that if it had been a little more forceful, then his window would have shattered, the pieces flying at him. He did not honk again. And when, forty five minutes later, the praying men and women dispatched to their various destinations, the prayer concluded, and the traffic, although slow at first, started moving again, he was glad.
When he got home, he felt like he would run mad and so he forced himself to sleep to pacify his anger.
He woke up minutes later, his sleep perturbed with turning and tossing, still angry but clear eyed. His anger had somehow turned to frustration, he couldn't believe that he had to start from beginning again, another five months, another planting period, he groaned. Efe and Victor had still not returned. He picked his phone and scrolled through his contact realizing he did not know who to call, or what to say. Talking and arranging meetings had always been Efe's forte while his was in the paperwork. Where was the man anyway? The opened his contact and clicked on the call icon. He answered on the third ring.
"Where are you? How many minutes does it take to get here?"
"Sir, you told us to trek," Efe responded.
"Now, I'm telling you to fly. I'm not in the mood for jokes, get yourself here. Where are you?"
"Outside the gate."
"Come to my office."
When he came, Victor trailed behind.
"What are you doing here?" Edegbe asked when he saw him.
"Sah, please, don't send me back," he begged.
"Do you intend on working in my office now? Get back to your post!"
"My post?"
Efe leaned to whisper. "I told you to go and sleep, you're scared for nothing. I'm not sure he even remembered what he said."
Tentatively, Victor scrambled off.
"Everything is gone," Edegbe said, reminding himself.
"I'm going to drop the honorific for now. See, Edegbe, let's leave, this is a sign that we should leave."
Edegbe glared at him. "You think I'm going to let my money go to waste?"
"You can always recover the money, you know what you can't recover? The time, let's not waste any more time."
"You should pick up that honorific," Edegbe said, silencing him.
Efe exhaled in a controlled silent rage, but obliged. "Yes, Sir."
"And I'm going to deduct from your salary next month."
He knew it was coming to that. "Yes, sir."
"We need those brick fences before we can start again."
"Yes, sir."
"You know what to do."
"Sir, I talked to Mr Tanko and—"
"—you talked to that man? What for?"
"It is not entirely his fault."
"Then will you take the responsibility?"
"It's going to be unnecessary finding another agriculturalist, he agreed to work with us again but unless I front the business and report to you. He doesn't want to work directly with you."
"What do you mean he doesn't want to work with me? Who is in charge here?"
"I'll just be the middle man."
"These northerners are just so crazy. On my way back a man threatened to burn down my car because I honked for the praying Muslims to know people are waiting on them. I can't even report that my farm was encroached into by some illiterate men who drink the piss of cow."
"You're the one who decided to come here," Efe flared. "If I have my way I won't even be here. So please, don't add a pile load of work to the ones I already have. Do you agree that I'll front this business or not?"
Edegbe threw a briefcase at him. "Don't get angry, you have no right to get angry, I'm the only one who can get angry."
"Sorry, sir." Then he smiled. "Do you agree that I'll front this deal?"
"I'll think about it, and tell that man I'm not giving him any of my money this month."