The German Financier's Daughter

By Curtis David Neil

She ain't gorgeous, she just looks that way.

When Zebedee hooks up a with girl from Frankfurt on a beach on the Sea of Galilee, he assumes it's going to be just another holiday romance. But as the nights grow longer, and the time left before her flight home gets shorter, you begin to wonder if he might be in for the ride of his life.

This collection of fourteen stories starts off looking a lot like fiction. But slowly it dawns on you, they might actually be about fiction. The kind we all use to invent an identity for ourselves, building from the raw materials of memories, dreams, and wishes for a life that's better than the one we have. Anything that comes to hand is fair game – a polaroid snapshot from a happier time, something you overheard in the waiting room, a line from song that speaks to something we all need.

It's a message of hope. Speaking a faith that it really is possible to weave memories and imaginary worlds into something more enduring.

Like whirlwind of sex and sand.

Or maybe even love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Freedom Press
• Release date: Oct 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215344033

Book preview

Japhy Ryder began writing as a freelance journalist in London and the Middle East, with stories published in newspapers including the London Evening Standard and The Gulf Today. His short-form fiction can be found in publications including Commuter Lit, Emerge 19 and Blake Jones Review.

www.japhyryder.net

JAPHY RYDER

the german

financier’s daughter

and other stories

several of them true

but mostly far more interesting than that

www.freedompress.biz

Acknowledgements

‘Crunch’ previously published in Commuter Lit

‘Song for Someone I passed Upon the Stair’ published in English Bay Review

‘Pacific Suicide’ previously sung by The Kings of Kavorka

‘The German Financier’s Daughter’ previously published in Emerge 19

‘Waiting for Suzie’ previously published in Blake-Jones Review

‘Love on Lithium’ previously published in The Awakenings Review

The German Financier’s Daughter and Other Stories, Several of Them True, But Mostly More Interesting Than That is a work of fiction. Apart from the lives of one or possibly two rock stars, all names, characters, places and incidents may or may not have taken place in the author’s imagination. Any reference to bipolar disorder as a way of explaining any of the happenings within the book, or the creation thereof, will likely be met with mild amusement.

FREEDOM PRESS

308-3637 Cambie Street, Vancouver BC V5Z 2X3, Canada

Copyright © Japhy Ryder

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Ryder, Japhy, 1974-present

The German Financier’s Daughter / Japhy Ryder

p. cm. – (Freedom Press Deluxe Edition)

NBSI 977-1-23-239545-0

1. Beat Generation-Fiction I. Title

SP2538.D093859D48 2019

254’.56-dc22 200049256

Printed in the United Provinces of Canada

Set in Garamond

Except in the United Provinces of Canada, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than in a brown paper bag with the words Live at Leeds or In Through the Out Door printed on the outside and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by nibbling of the ear lobes. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy on the high seas. Your support of the author’s wellbeing is greatly appreciated.

www.japhyryder.net

For Zebedee. He knows who he is.

Contents

PART ONE - GRASPING

Crunch

Creative License

He Dreamed of Cars

Song for Someone I Passed Upon the Stair

Crosstown Traffic

I AM Dennis Wilson

Christmas at Hotel Amnesia

Song for a Pacific Suicide

PART TWO - SURFACING

The German Financier’s Daughter

Girl 6, or: Why Don’t You Find Somebody Nice to Settle Down With

Waiting for Suzie

Well Now, Bhikkus

Love on Lithium

She Brings Me Strawberries

PART ONE

- CRAVING -

Deep inside this bone box where I’m sometimes trapped for weeks, it’s hard to tell the truth from memories. Imagination from madness. Endless coils of grey jelly, but little clue whether any of it corresponds to what’s in front of the two big holes cut for the images to enter, within earshot of the two little holes drilled for the songs to get in…

Crunch

Then over the groaning of the metal I hear a sharp ‘crack’ above me. Would that even have been possible? It’s so hard to know. Also, do I now imagine a flimsy of thin skin, or did I imagine it then?

As the swings and see-saws spin into the background, there’s the sound of gristle. I hear it now. That sound I know. Snapping back a chicken’s leg. Come to think of it, it’s actually the knee. A chicken’s knee cracked backwards to get at that last bit of meat. The knee not much bigger than a child’s finger joint. A knuckle. I know that now. But I’ll never really know if I knew it then.

First thing I think of is Mummy, where’s my Mummy? A scream inside my chest, a vast, terrifying scream, big enough to fill the entire playground. Not sure if I’m more scared of what just happened, or the scream itself. I can’t let it out if she’s not here. But I can’t keep it in either because this time, I’ve never known this before, this time the fear has no bottom.

Although of course Mummy’s not with us. We’re not supposed to come to the playing field at breaktime. She’s at home, walk home together, hand-in-hand past the tall flowers outside the church hall on Lavender Hill. At least that’s what I always thought it was called, a blossoming street from an idyllic childhood. Checked a map the other day, it’s actually called Lancaster Road. Only goes to show. In my memory, hollyhocks tall and straight like the railings. But prettier. Delicate crepe-paper flowers dancing in the summer sky. Red and pink and every color. They’re always there, but I don’t know how that can have been. Always summer, always blooming? Maybe the permanence was added after. Only now am I starting to figure out when it all ended.

It’s not sunny anymore. The sky is dark, windy. Colors leached, dark green and grey. Landscape with a playground ride, a roundabout with teeth. The steel lattice of the Witch’s Hat rust-brown like the earth, almost blue where the metal catches the light. Still spinning around, like a maypole but with bars instead of ribbons. Splashes of blood on the gravel must be red, but perhaps that too came later. Perhaps it was originally black, or at least looked that way. Perhaps I added the scarlet afterwards, like Spielberg added it to Schindler’s List. Perhaps all the color, all the flowers, all the sunshine were added afterwards. Wishful thinking.

Dominic is screaming. I think I am too, but actually I’m in a nightmare. I fell into it the second I heard that sound. Like the time I came downstairs in the night and Mummy and Daddy were watching television and the man got shot and fell down and his blood spilled on the ground. They didn’t notice me until it was too late, until I’d already seen it, then Daddy flicked the television off. I’ve sometimes wondered if that was the moment it ended, but it wasn’t. Perhaps it was the beginning, though. More likely the actual moment was when I heard the ‘crack’ and then Dominic fell to the ground. Or the ‘crunch’. When I clicked into some altered reality, what I think must have happened is my brain couldn’t accept it was happening. Flipped into a different mode, one of thick heavy colors with black blood splashing onto the ground. Too terrified to even have a reaction.

But of course the film on the television couldn’t have been in color. That didn’t come till later. The dark, over-saturated tones of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the scene where the Katy Jurado weeps as her husband bleeds, Dylan singing ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ in his exhaustion, I must have layered those colors on afterwards. The mahogany pool of blood spreading over Mexican gravel as the night comes on, that I must have transposed.

Dominic fell. As soon as I heard the crack, or maybe the crunch, I looked up. I saw him let go of the bar with his other hand and his body fell. Like a puppet cut from its strings. It wasn’t really happening. His body bouncing on the bars below him then spinning around. As if the Witch’s Hat was playing with him. Flipped him up in the air and threw him down on the gravel. Don’t fuck with me, it said, although again that might have come after.

Flashing lights, sirens like from the TV. A sound I must have heard before in my innocence, but this afternoon it’s like the first time. The first time in anger. Ambulance square, solid beside the empty round trellis of the Witch’s Hat. I don’t know how it got there, didn’t at the time and still don’t now. It must have come from somewhere, bouncing across the grass, but I didn’t see it. They kept the sirens on while they bundled Dominic onto a gurney and stuffed him into the back. I wouldn’t even have called a gurney at that time, probably would have said it was a trolley. Or maybe a bed on wheels. But I can tell you this much, since that day I’ve never set eyes on one without thinking of Dominic’s hand.

Mummy fetches me from school. Miss Smith gives me the afternoon off. We drive home a different way and don’t see the hollyhocks. Somewhere along the way I slip out of the horror flick and back into my life. But nothing is the same. Outside our house I