3,096 Days (28 page)

Priklopil helped me put my ski boots on and step into the bindings. Uncertain, I slid across the slippery snow on the skis. He pulled me over the piles of snow at the side of the road and pushed me over the edge, directly on to the slope. It seemed murderously steep to me and I was terrified at the speed at which I was hurtling downwards. The skis and boots probably weighed more than my legs. I didn’t have the necessary muscles to steer, and had likely
even forgotten how to go about doing that. The only ski course I had taken in my life was during my time in afterschool care – one week that we had spent at a youth hostel in Bad Aussee. I had been afraid, hadn’t initially wanted to go along, so vivid were my memories of my broken arm. But my ski instructor was nice and cheered me on every time I managed to make a turn. I slowly made progress and even skied in the big race down the practice slope on the last day of the course. At the finish line I threw my arms up and cheered. Then I let myself fall backwards into the snow. I hadn’t felt so free and proud of myself in ages.

Free and proud – a life that was light years away.

I tried desperately to brake. But at my first attempt the ski jammed, toppling me into the snow. ‘What are you doing?’ criticized Priklopil, when he stopped next to me and helped me up. ‘You have to ski in curves! Like this!’

It took me a while to be able to stay on my skis at least for a little and for us to move forward a few metres. My helplessness and weakness seemed to soothe the kidnapper enough to make him decide to buy lift passes for us. We queued up in the long line of laughing, jostling skiers who could hardly wait for the lift to spit them out again at the next peak. In the midst of all these people in their colourful ski-suits, I felt like a creature from another planet. I recoiled when they pushed past me so closely, touching me. I recoiled whenever our skis and poles became enmeshed, when I became suddenly wedged in among strangers who very likely didn’t even notice me, but whose stares I thought I could feel.
You don’t belong here. This is not your place
. Priklopil shoved me from behind. ‘Wake up. Move it, move it.’

After what seemed like an eternity, we were finally sitting in the air. I floated through the wintry mountain landscape – a moment of peace and stillness, which I tried to savour. But my body rebelled against the unfamiliar strain. My legs trembled and I froze miserably. When the chair lift entered the upper station, I
panicked. I didn’t know how to jump off and got tangled in my poles in my agitation. Priklopil swore at me, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me off the lift at the last moment.

After a couple of runs, a modicum of self-assuredness slowly returned. I could keep myself upright long enough to enjoy the short runs before I fell into the snow again. I felt my life force returning, and for the first time in ages I experienced something like bliss. I stopped as often as I could to view the panorama. Wolfgang Priklopil, proud of his knowledge of local geography, explained which mountains we saw all around. From the Hochkar summit you could see over to the massive Ötscher; behind it, mountain chains upon mountain chains vanished into the fog.

‘That over there is even Styria,’ he lectured. ‘And there, on the other side, you can almost see all the way to the Czech Republic.’

The snow glittered in the sun and the sky was an intense blue. I took deep breaths and wanted most of all to stop time. But the kidnapper pushed me to hurry up: ‘This day has cost me a fortune. We have to take full advantage of it now!’

‘I have to go to the toilet!’ Priklopil looked at me, annoyed. ‘I really have to go!’ There was nothing left for him to do other than ski with me to the next lodge. He decided in favour of the lower station, because the toilets there were located in a separate building, making it possible to avoid having to go through the restaurant area. We unstrapped our skis. The kidnapper took me to the toilets and hissed at me to hurry up. He would wait for me and keep a close eye on the time. Initially, it puzzled me that he didn’t come with me. After all, he could have said that he had got the wrong door. But he stayed outside.

The toilets were empty when I walked in. But as I was in the stall, I heard a door opening. I was terrified – I was certain that I had taken too long and the kidnapper had come into the ladies to get me. But when I hurried back out into the small anteroom, a
blonde woman stood in front of the mirror. For the first time since my imprisonment began I was alone with another person.

I don’t remember exactly what I said. I only know that I gathered all my courage together and spoke to her. But all that came out of my mouth was a soft squeak.

The blonde woman smiled at me in a friendly way, turned round – and left. She hadn’t understood what I’d said. That was the first time that I had spoken to someone. And it was just like in my worst nightmares. People couldn’t hear me. I was invisible. I mustn’t hope for help from others.

It wasn’t until after I escaped that I found out that the woman was a tourist from the Netherlands and simply hadn’t understood what I was saying to her. At the time, her reaction came as a blow to me.

I have only a hazy memory of the rest of the ski trip. I had once again failed to seize an opportunity. When I was locked in my dungeon again that evening, I was more desperate than I had been in ages.

Soon after that, the decisive date was drawing near: my eighteenth birthday. It was the date that I had feverishly anticipated for ten years, and I was determined to celebrate my day properly – even if it had to be in captivity.

In the years before, the kidnapper had allowed me to bake a cake. This time I wanted something special. I knew that his business partner organized parties in a remotely located warehouse. The kidnapper had shown me videos depicting Turkish and Serb weddings. He wanted to use them to make a video compilation to promote the event venue. I had greedily absorbed the images of the celebrating people, who jumped around in a circle holding hands, doing the strangest dances. At one celebration, an entire shark lay on the buffet, and at another, bowl upon bowl full of unfamiliar foods were lined up. But the cakes fascinated me most
of all. Works of art built of several layers, featuring flowers made of marzipan or sponge cake and cream in the shape of a car. I wanted a cake like that – in the shape of an ‘18’, the symbol of my adulthood.

When I came up into the house on the morning of 17 February 2006, there it stood on the kitchen table: a ‘1’ and an ‘8’ made of fluffy sponge cake, covered in a sugary pink foam and decorated with candles. I don’t remember what other gifts I received that day. There were certainly several more, because Priklopil loved celebrating such special days. However, for me that ‘18’ was the focal point of my little celebration. It was a symbol of freedom. It was
the
symbol, the sign that it was high time for me to keep my promise.

That day began like any other – at the behest of the timer switch. I lay in my bunk bed when the light in my dungeon turned on, waking me from a confused dream. I remained in bed for some time and tried to decipher its significance from the slivers of my dream. However, the harder I tried to reach for them, the more they slid away from me. Only a vague feeling remained that I reflected on wonderingly. Deep resolve. I hadn’t felt that way in a long time.

After a while, hunger motivated me to get out of bed. There had been no dinner and my stomach was rumbling. Driven by the thought of eating something, I climbed down the ladder. But before I reached the bottom, I remembered that I didn’t have anything more to eat. The previous evening, the kidnapper had given me a tiny piece of cake to take with me to my dungeon for breakfast, which I had already devoured. Frustrated, I brushed my teeth in order to rid my mouth of the slightly sour taste of empty stomach. Then I looked around, uncertain as to what to do. That morning my dungeon was a big mess. Articles of clothing lay strewn all over the place and paper was stacked on my desk. Other days I would have begun tidying up immediately, making my tiny room as comfortable and organized as possible. But that morning, I had no desire to. I felt a strange, distanced feeling towards those four walls that had become my home.

In a short orange-coloured dress I was very proud of, I waited
for the kidnapper to open the door. Other than that I had only leggings and paint-stained T-shirts, a turtleneck jumper formerly belonging to the kidnapper for cold days and a couple of clean, simple things for the few outings he had taken me on over the past few months. In that dress I was able to feel like a normal girl. The kidnapper had bought it for me as a reward for my work in the garden. In the spring after my eighteenth birthday, he had allowed me to work outside now and again under his supervision. He had grown less cautious; there was a constant danger that the neighbours could see me. Twice already I had been greeted from across the fence while I was weeding in the garden. ‘Temporary help,’ the kidnapper once said by way of brief explanation, when the neighbour waved at me. He seemed satisfied with the information and I had been incapable of saying anything anyway.

When the door to my dungeon finally opened, I saw Priklopil from below standing on the forty-centimetre step. A sight that could still frighten me after all that time. Priklopil seemed so big, an overpowering shadow, distorted by the light bulb in the anteroom – just like a jailer in a horror film. But that day he didn’t seem threatening to me. I felt strong and self-assured.

‘May I put on a pair of knickers?’ I asked him, even before I greeted him. The kidnapper looked at me, amazed.

‘Out of the question,’ he answered.

In the house I always had to work half-naked, and in the garden I was principally not allowed to wear any knickers. It was one of his ways to keep me down.

‘Please, it’s much more comfortable,’ I added.

He shook his head energetically.

‘Absolutely not. What made you think of that? Come on now!’

I followed him into the anteroom and waited for him to crawl through the passageway. The rounded, heavy concrete door, which had become a permanent fixture in my life’s scenery, stood open.
Whenever I saw in front of me that colossus of a door made of reinforced concrete, a lump always came to my throat. Over the last few years I had had damn good luck. Any accident the kidnapper might have had would have been a death sentence for me. The door couldn’t be opened from the inside and couldn’t be found from the outside. I pictured the scene vividly. How I would realize after a couple of days that the kidnapper had disappeared. How I would run amok in my room and how mortal fear would grip me. How I would manage with my last ounce of strength to kick down the two wooden doors. But that concrete door would be the decisive factor of life or death. Lying in front of it, I would die of hunger and thirst. It was a relief every time I slipped through the narrow passageway behind the kidnapper. Once again a morning had broken when he opened that door, when he hadn’t left me in the lurch. Again I had escaped my underground grave. When I climbed the stairs into the garage, I sucked the air deep into my lungs. I was upstairs.

The kidnapper ordered me to get him two pieces of bread with jam from the kitchen. I watched him bite into the bread with pleasure as my stomach growled. His teeth left no marks. Delicious, crispy bread with butter and apricot jam. And I was given nothing – after all, I’d had my cake. I never would have dared tell him that I had already eaten the dry slice the evening before.

After Priklopil had eaten breakfast, I washed up and went over to the tear-off calendar in the kitchen. As I did every morning, I tore off the page with the bold-face number and folded it into small pieces. I stared at the date for a long time: 23 August 2006. It was the 3,096th day of my imprisonment.

That day, Wolfgang Priklopil was in a good mood. It was to be the beginning of a new era, the dawn of a less difficult period with no money worries. That morning two decisive steps were to be taken. First of all, he wanted to get rid of the old delivery
van he had used eight and a half years ago to abduct me. And, secondly, he had placed an advert on the Internet for a flat we had spent the last few months renovating. He had purchased it six months before in the hope that the rental income would alleviate the constant financial pressure his crime had put him under. The money, so he told me, was from his business activities with Holzapfel.

It was shortly after my eighteenth birthday that he had excitedly filled me in one morning.

‘There’s a new remodelling job. We are going to leave presently for Hollergasse.’

His delight was catching and I was in urgent need of a change of scenery. The magical date of my adulthood had passed and barely anything had changed. I was just as oppressed and monitored as all the years before. Except that a switch had been activated within me. My uncertainty about whether the kidnapper wasn’t in fact right after all and I was better off in his care than outside was slowly disappearing. I was now an adult. My other self held me tight, and I knew precisely I didn’t want to continue living this way. I had survived the period of my youth as the kidnapper’s slave, punch bag and companion, and made myself at home in this world, as long as I had no other choice. But now that period was over. Whenever I was in my dungeon, I recalled over and over all the plans I had made as a child for this time in my life. I wanted to be independent. Become an actress, write books, make music, experience other people, be free. I no longer wanted to accept the fact that I was to be the prisoner in his fantasy for all eternity. I just had to wait for the right opportunity. Maybe that would be the new remodelling job. After all the years I had spent chained to the house, I was allowed to work at another location for the first time. Under the kidnapper’s strict supervision, but still.