I spent more and more time upstairs in the house, spent hours dusting, tidying up and cooking. As always he never let me out of his sight for a second. His desire to control me completely went so far that he even took all the doors to the toilets off their hinges: I was not to be out of his sight for two minutes. His permanent presence drove me to desperation.
But he too was a prisoner of his own screenplay. Whenever he locked me in his dungeon, he had to supply me with food, etc. Whenever he fetched me to come upstairs, he spent every single minute monitoring me. His methods were always the same. But the pressure on him grew. What if a hundred blows weren’t enough to keep me down? Then he would be a failure in his Pleasantville as well. And there was no turning back.
Priklopil was aware of this risk. As a result he did everything he could to make me understand what would be in store for me should I dare leave his world. I remember a scene when he humiliated me so badly that I immediately fled back into the house.
One afternoon I was working upstairs and asked him to open a window. All I wanted was a bit more air, a hint of the twittering birds outside. The kidnapper barked at me, ‘You only want me to open it so that you can scream and run away.’
I swore he could believe me that I wouldn’t run. ‘I’ll stay, I promise. I’ll never run away.’
He looked at me doubtfully, then grabbed me by the upper arm and dragged me to the front door. It was broad daylight outside and, although the street was devoid of people, his manoeuvre was still risky. He opened the door and shoved me outside without ever loosening his grip on my arm. ‘Go on, run! Go on! Just see how far you get the way you look!’
I was paralysed with fright and shame. I was hardly wearing anything and tried to cover my body as best I could with my free hand. My shame that a stranger might see me so emaciated, with all my bruises and the short stubbly hair on my head, was greater than the slim hope that someone could witness the scene and start to wonder.
He did that a few times, shoving me outside naked in front of the house and saying, ‘Go on, run! Just see how far you get.’ Each time the world outside would become more and more threatening. I was confronted with a massive conflict between my longing to know that world outside and the fear of taking that step. For months I had begged to be allowed outside for a short time and again and again I was told, ‘What do you want out there? You’re not missing anything. Outside is just the same as inside here. Besides, you’ll scream when you’re outside, and then I’ll have to kill you.’
He, in turn, vacillated between his pathological paranoia, his fear of having his crime discovered, and his dream of a normal life where we would have to go out into the outside world. It was a vicious circle, and the more he felt backed into a corner by his own thoughts, the more aggressively he turned against me. Like before, he relied on a mixture of psychological and physical violence. He trampled mercilessly on what remained of my selfesteem and hammered the same words into me over and over: ‘You are worthless. You should be grateful to me that I took you in. Nobody else would take you.’ He told me that my parents were in jail and that nobody was living in our old flat. ‘Where would you go if you ran away? Nobody out there wants you. You would come crawling back to me remorsefully.’ And he reminded me insistently that he would kill anyone who happened to witness any attempt at escape. The first victims, he told me, would probably be the neighbours. And I certainly didn’t want to be responsible for them, did I?
He meant the people in the house next door. Ever since I had swum in their pool from time to time, I had felt connected to them in a unique way. As if they were the ones who had enabled me to enjoy my small escape from everyday life in the house. I never saw them, but in the evening when I was upstairs in the house, I sometimes heard them calling their cats. Their voices sounded friendly and concerned. Like people who take loving care of those who are dependent on them. Priklopil tried to keep any contact with them largely to a minimum. Sometimes they brought him a cake or a trinket from their travels. One time they rang the bell while I was in the house and I had to hide quickly in the garage. I heard their voices as they stood in front of the door with the kidnapper, giving him some homemade food. He always threw such things away immediately. Given his obsession with cleanliness, he never would have eaten any of it because they disgusted him.
When he took me out for the first time, I had no sense of liberation. I had looked forward so much to finally being allowed to leave my prison. However, I sat in the passenger seat and was paralysed with fear. The kidnapper had drilled into me precisely what I was to say if someone were to recognize me: ‘First of all you are to act as if you don’t know what they’re talking about. If that doesn’t help, you say, “No, you’ve got the wrong person.” And if somebody asks me who you are, you are my niece.’ Natascha had ceased to exist long ago. Then he started the car and drove slowly out of the garage.
We drove down Heinestrasse in Strasshof: front gardens, hedgerows with family houses behind them. The street was empty of people. I could feel my heart beating in my throat. For the first time in seven years I had left the kidnapper’s house. He drove through a world I knew only from my memories and from short video films the kidnapper had made for me years ago. Small snapshots that showed Strasshof, occasionally a few people. When he turned on to the main street and queued up in traffic, I saw a man walking down the pavement out of the corner of my eye. He walked in a strangely monotonous way, never stopping, never making a surprising movement, like a wind-up toy soldier with a key sticking out of his back.
Everything I saw seemed unreal. It was like the first time I stood in the garden at night at the age of twelve; doubts struck me about the existence of all these people who moved so matter-of-factly and nonchalantly through an environment which I knew, but which had become completely alien to me. The bright light that bathed everything seemed as if it came from a gigantic spotlight. At that moment I was certain the kidnapper had arranged everything. It was his film set, his own gigantic Truman Show. All the people here were extras, everything was only play-acted in order to make me believe that I was outside, while in reality I remained trapped in an expanded prison cell. I didn’t understand until later that I was caught in my own psychological prison.
We left Strasshof, drove cross-country for a bit and stopped in a small forest. I was allowed to get out of the car briefly. The air smelled tangy, of wood, and below me dappled sunlight skimmed across the dry pine needles. I knelt down and carefully laid my hand on the ground. The needles pricked me, leaving behind red dots on the heel of my hand. I took a few steps towards a tree and placed my forehead against a tree trunk. The craggy bark was warm from the sun and exuded the intense odour of resin. Just like the trees I remembered from my childhood.
On the way back, neither of us said a word. When the kidnapper let me out of the car in the garage and locked me in my dungeon, a deep sadness welled up within me. I had looked forward to the world outside for so long, had pictured it in the most vivid colours. And now I had moved through it as if it were an imaginary world. My reality had become the birch wallpaper in the kitchen. This was the environment in which I knew how I was supposed to move. Outside, I stumbled around as if caught in the wrong film.
That feeling ebbed somewhat the next time I was allowed out. The kidnapper had become emboldened by my submissive and frightened attitude in my first tentative steps outside the house. Just a few days later he took me to a chemist’s in town. He had promised to allow me to pick something nice there. The kidnapper parked the car in front of the shop and hissed at me once again, ‘Not a word. Otherwise everyone in there will die.’ Then he got out, walked around the car and held the door open for me.
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?’
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