3,096 Days (26 page)

I walked ahead of him into the shop. I could hear him softly breathing right behind me and imagined his hand in his jacket pocket closing around a pistol, ready to shoot everyone if I made a single wrong move. But I would be good. I would endanger no one. I wouldn’t run away. I wanted nothing more than to snatch a small slice of the life that other girls my age took for granted: walking through the cosmetics section at the chemist’s. Although I wasn’t allowed to put on make-up – the kidnapper wouldn’t even allow me to wear normal clothes – I had been able to wring a
concession out of him. I was permitted to choose two items that were part of the normal life of a teenager.

To my mind, mascara was an indispensable must. I had read that in the teen magazines the kidnapper had brought to my dungeon from time to time. I had read the pages of make-up tips over and over, imagining making myself pretty for my first trip to a club. Laughing and preening with my girlfriends in front of the mirror, trying on one blouse and then the other.
Is my hair okay? Come on, let’s go!

And now, there I stood between the long shelves of innumerable little bottles and tubes I was unfamiliar with. They held a magical attraction for me, but also unsettled me. It was so much at once, I didn’t know what to do, and I was afraid I would drop something.

‘Come on! Hurry up!’ I heard the voice behind me say. I hastily grabbed a tube of mascara and selected a small bottle of essential mint oil from a wooden shelf. I wanted to keep it open in my dungeon in the hope that it would mask the mouldy smell. The whole time the kidnapper stood right behind me. He made me nervous; I felt like a criminal who had not yet been recognized, but could be discovered at any moment. I made an effort to walk up to the checkout as easily as possible. A round woman was sitting there, probably around fifty years old, her grey curls somewhat crooked. When she addressed me with a friendly
Grüss Gott!
*
, I jumped. They were the first words a stranger had addressed to me in over seven years. The last time I had spoken to anyone other than myself or my kidnapper was when I had still been a small, pudgy child. Now the cashier greeted me like a real grown-up customer. She addressed me with the formal
Sie
and smiled while I silently laid the two items on the conveyor belt. I was so grateful
to that woman for taking note of me, for seeing that I actually existed. I could have remained standing at the checkout counter for hours, simply to feel the closeness of another person. It never occurred to me to ask her for help. The kidnapper stood, armed I was convinced, only centimetres away. I never would have endangered that woman, who had, just for a short moment, given me the feeling that I was actually alive.

Over the next few days, my beatings increased. Again and again the kidnapper angrily locked me up, and again and again I lay on my bed covered in bruises, struggling with myself.
I mustn’t allow myself to be swallowed up in my pain. I mustn’t give up. I mustn’t give in to the thought that this imprisonment was the best thing that would ever happen to me.
I had to tell myself, over and over, that I wasn’t lucky having to live with the kidnapper, despite what he had hammered into me time and again. His words had closed around me like mantraps. Whenever I lay balled up in pain in the dark, I knew that he was in the wrong. But the human brain quickly represses injuries. Already the next day I was happy to submit to the illusion that it wasn’t all that bad, and believed his flights of imagination.

But if I ever wanted to escape the dungeon, I had to get rid of these mantraps.

I want once more in my life some happiness
And survive in the ecstasy of living
I want once more see a smile and a laughing for a while
I want once more the taste of someone’s love
*

Diary entry, January 2006

Back then I began to write short messages to myself. When you see something in black and white, things become more tangible. They become reality on a level that your mind finds more difficult to escape from. From then on I wrote down every beating, soberly and without emotion. I still have these records today. Some of them were entered into a simple school notebook in A5 format in precise, clean handwriting. Others I wrote on a green A4-sized sheet, the lines very close together. My notes back then fulfilled the same purpose as today. Because even looking back, the small, positive experiences during my imprisonment are more present in my mind than the unbelievable horrors I was subjected to for years.

20 August 2005. Wolfgang hit me at least three times in the face, shoved his knee into my tailbone about four times and once into my pubic bone. He forced me to kneel in front of him and gouged a key ring into my left elbow, giving me a bruise and an abrasion with a yellowish secretion. In addition to the screaming and tormenting. Six punches to my head.

21 August 2005. Morning grumbling. Insults for no reason. Then blows and spanking. Kicks and shoving. Seven blows to the face, a punch to the head. Insults and blows to the face, a punch to the head. Insults and blows, only breakfast with no cereal. Then darkness down below / no discussion / stupid manipulative statements. And once scratching my gums with his finger. Holding and pressing down with my chin and choking my neck.

22 August 2005. Punches to the head.

23 August 2005. At least 60 blows to the face. 10–15 punches to the head causing severe nausea, four slaps with his flat, vicious hand to the head, a punch with all his strength to my right ear and jaw. My ear turned blackish. Choking, a hard uppercut making my jaw crunch, c. 70 blows
with his knee, primarily to my tailbone and my rear end. Punches to the small of my back and my spine, my ribs and between my breasts. Blows with a broom to my left elbow and upper arm (blackish-brown bruise), as well as to my left wrist. Four blows to my eye making me see blue flashes of light. And much more.

24 August 2005. Vicious blows with his knee to my stomach and genital area (wanted to get me to kneel). And to my lower spinal column as well. Slaps to the face, a vicious punch to my right ear (bluish-black discoloration). Then darkness in the dungeon with no food or air.

25 August 2005. Punches to my hip bone and my breastbone. Then utterly spiteful insults. Darkness in the dungeon. The whole day I only had seven raw carrots and a glass of milk.

26 August 2005. Vicious blows using his fist to the front side of my upper thigh and my rear end (ankle). As well as ringing slaps to my bottom, back, the side of my thighs, right shoulder, underarms and bosom leaving behind red pustules.

The horror of one single week, of which there was a countless number. Sometimes it was so bad that I shook so much I couldn’t hold the pen any more. I crept into bed, whimpering, full of fear that the images from the day would come upon me at night as well. Then I spoke to my other self, who was waiting for me and would take me by the hand, no matter what was yet to happen. I imagined that she could see me in the triptych mirror that now hung above the sink in my dungeon. If I only looked long enough, I would see my strong self reflected in my face.

The next time, I had fervently promised myself, I wouldn’t let go of an outstretched hand. I would have the strength to ask someone for help.

One morning, the kidnapper gave me a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He wanted me to accompany him to a do-it-yourself centre. My courage already began to sink as we turned on to the road leading to Vienna. If he continued on that road, we would drive towards my old neighbourhood. It was the same route I had taken on 2 March 1998 in the opposite direction – cowering on the floor in the back of the van. Back then I was afraid of dying. Now I was seventeen, sat in the front seat and was afraid of living.

We drove through Süssenbrunn, just a few streets away from my grandmother’s house. It seemed irretrievably lost to me, as if from a distant century. I saw the familiar streets, the houses, the cobblestones where I had played hopscotch. But I no longer belonged there.

‘Lower your eyes,’ Priklopil snapped next to me. I immediately obeyed. Being so close to the places of my childhood made my throat tighten and I fought back the tears. Somewhere over there, on our right, was the street leading to Rennbahnweg. Somewhere over there to our right in the large council estate, my mother was perhaps at that moment sitting at the kitchen table. Surely she now thought that I had to be dead, and here I was driving past her just a few hundred metres away. I felt beaten down and much, much further away than just those few streets that in reality lay between us.

The feeling grew when the kidnapper turned into the car park at the DIY store. My mother had waited at the red light at that corner to turn right hundreds of times. Because that was where my sister’s flat was. Today I know that Waltraud Priklopil, the kidnapper’s mother, also lived just a few hundred metres away.

The shop’s car park was full of people. A couple queued up at a sausage stand at the entrance. Others pushed their shopping trolleys towards their cars. Blue-collar workers in their stained blue trousers carried wooden slats across the car park. My
nerves were stretched to breaking point. I stared out of the window. One of these many people had to see me, had to notice that something was not right here. The kidnapper seemed to read my thoughts: ‘You stay seated. You’ll get out when I tell you to. And then you stay right in front of me and walk slowly to the entrance. I don’t want to hear a sound!’

I went into the DIY store in front of him. He directed me with a slight pressure from one hand on my shoulder. I could feel his nervousness, the fibres in his fingers twitching.

I let my gaze sweep through the long corridor in front of me. Men in work clothes stood in front of shelves, in groups or alone, holding lists and busily absorbed in their own errands. Which one of them should I address? And what was I even to say? I eyed each one out of the corner of my eye. But the longer I looked at them, the more the people’s faces distorted into grimaces. They suddenly seemed hostile and unfriendly. Heavily built people, busy with themselves and blind to their surroundings. My thoughts raced. All of a sudden it seemed absurd to ask someone for help. Who was going to believe me after all, a gaunt, confused teenager, hardly capable of using her own voice? What would happen if I were to turn to one of these men and ask, ‘Please help me?’

‘My niece does this all the time. The poor thing. She is unfortunately confused. She needs her medication,’ Priklopil would say, and all around everyone would nod in understanding as he grabbed me by the upper arm and dragged me out of the shop. For a moment I could have heard insane cackling breaking out. The kidnapper wouldn’t have to kill anyone to cover up his crime! Everything here played right into his hand. Nobody cared about me. Nobody would even think that I was telling the truth if I said, ‘Please help me. I’ve been kidnapped.’ Smile, you’re on
Candid Camera
! The presenter in disguise would come out from behind the shelves and reveal the joke. Or maybe the nice uncle behind
the strange girl. Voices shrilled crazily through my head:
Oh heavens. I really feel sorry for him. He has his cross to bear with someone like that … But so nice of him to take care of her
.

‘Can I help you?’ The question thundered in my ears like scorn. I needed a moment to realize that it hadn’t come from the confusion of voices inside my head. A sales clerk from the bathroom section was standing in front of us. ‘Can I help you?’ he repeated. His gaze swept up and over me briefly and remained fixed on the kidnapper. How clueless the friendly man was!
Yes, you can help me! Please!
I began to tremble and patches of sweat formed on my T-shirt. I felt nauseated and my brain ceased to obey me. What had I wanted to say just now?

‘Thank you, we’re fine,’ I heard a voice behind me saying. Then his hand clamped around my arm.
Thank you, we’re fine. And in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night.
Just like in
The Truman Show
.

As if in a trance, I dragged myself through the DIY store. Over, over. I had missed my opportunity. Maybe I had never really had one. I felt as if I were trapped in a transparent bubble. I could flail with my arms and legs, sink down in a gelatine-like mass, but I was unable to break through the skin. I wobbled through the corridors and saw people everywhere. But I was no longer one of them. I no longer had any rights. I was invisible.

After that experience I knew that I was unable to ask for help. What did the people outside know about the abstruse world I was trapped in? And who was I to drag them into it? That friendly sales clerk couldn’t help the fact that I had appeared in his store of all places. What right did I have to subject him to the risk of Priklopil running amok? Although his voice sounded neutral and had revealed none of his nervousness, I could almost hear his heart pounding in his chest. Then there was his grip on my arm, his eyes boring into me from behind the whole way through the shop.
The threat of him going on a shooting spree. Add to that my own weakness, my inability, my failure.

I lay awake that night for a long time. I was forced to think of the pact I had made with my other self. I was seventeen. The time when I had planned to redeem my pact was drawing nearer. The incident at the DIY centre had shown me that I had to do it myself. At the same time, I felt my strength dissipating and myself slipping deeper and deeper into the paranoid, bizarre world the kidnapper had constructed for me. But how was my disheartened, fearful self to become the strong self who was to take me by the hand and lead me out of my prison? I didn’t know. The only thing I knew was that I would need an immeasurable amount of strength and self-discipline. Wherever I could find them.