‘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.
What helped me back then were in fact the conversations I had with my second self and my notes. I had begun a second series of pages. Now I no longer recorded the beatings, but tried to encourage myself in writing. Pep talks I could retrieve whenever I was down and read aloud to myself. Sometimes it was like shooting arrows in the dark, but it worked.
Don’t let him get you down when he tells you that you are too stupid for anything.
Don’t let him get you down when he beats you.
Don’t answer back when he tells you that you are incapable.
Don’t answer back when he tells you that you can’t live without him.
Don’t react when he turns the light off on you.
Forgive him everything and don’t continue to be angry at him.
Be stronger.
Don’t give up.
Never, never give up.
Don’t let him get you down, never give up. But it was easier said than done. For such a long time all my thoughts were concentrated on getting out of that cellar, out of that house. Now I had managed it. And nothing had changed. I was just as trapped on the outside as I was on the inside. The outer walls seemed to become more permeable, but my inner walls were cemented like never before. Added to that was the fact that our ‘outings’ pushed Wolfgang Priklopil to the brink of panic. Torn between his dream of a normal life and the fear that I could destroy everything by attempting to escape or just by my behaviour in general, he became more and more erratic and uncontrolled, even when he knew that I was safely ensconced in the house. His outbursts of rage became more frequent. He naturally blamed me and fell into an utterly paranoid delusional state. He refused to be appeased by my timid and anxious demeanour in public. I don’t know if he secretly suspected me of pretending to be apprehensive. My inability to play-act in such a way became evident on another outing to Vienna, which actually should have put an end to my captivity.
We were driving straight ahead on Brünnerstrasse when traffic slowed. A stop-and-search operation by the police. I saw the police car and the officers waving vehicles to the side of the road from far away. Priklopil drew a sharp breath. He didn’t shift his position one millimetre, but I did observe his hands grasping the steering wheel tightly until his knuckles turned white. Outwardly he was completely calm as he stopped the car on the side of the street and opened the window.
‘Driving licence and vehicle registration please!’
I cautiously lifted my head. The police officer’s face seemed surprisingly young under his cap; his tone was firm, but friendly. Priklopil dug around for the papers, while the policeman eyed him. His eyes grazed me only briefly. A word formed in my head, a word I saw floating in the air as if in a large bubble like in the comic strips: HELP! I could see it so clearly before my very eyes that I could hardly believe the policeman wouldn’t react immediately. But he took the documents, unperturbed, and checked them.
Help! Get me out of here! You are checking a criminal! I blinked and rolled my eyes as if communicating in Morse code. It must have looked as if I was having some kind of seizure. But it was nothing more than a desperate SOS, blinked out by the eyelids of a scrawny teenager crouching on the passenger seat of a white delivery van.
Thoughts swirled around in my head. Perhaps I could just jump out of the van and start running? I could run over to the police car. After all, it was standing directly in front of me. But what should I say? Would they hear me? What would happen if they turned me away? Priklopil would collect me again, apologize profusely for the trouble and for his niece who was holding everything up. And besides: an escape attempt – that was the worst taboo I could break. If it failed, I didn’t want even to imagine what was in store for me. But what would happen if it worked? I pictured Priklopil flooring the accelerator and pulling away with squealing tyres. Then he would flip the car into oncoming traffic. Screeching brakes, shattering glass, blood, death. Priklopil hanging lifeless over the steering column, sirens approaching from a distance.
‘Thank you. Everything’s in order! Drive safely!’ The policeman smiled briefly, pushing Priklopil’s documents through the window. He had no idea that he had just stopped the van in which a small girl had been abducted nearly eight years ago. He had no idea that this small girl had been held captive for nearly eight years in the kidnapper’s cellar. He had no idea how close he had come to uncovering a crime – and becoming a witness to Priklopil’s mad attempt at a car chase. One word from me would have been enough, a brave assertion. Instead I cowered in my seat and closed my eyes as the kidnapper started the engine.
I had probably missed my greatest opportunity to leave this nightmare behind. It wasn’t until later that I realized that one option had never crossed my mind: simply addressing the policeman. My fear that Priklopil would do something to anyon
e I came into contact with had become totally paralysing.
I was a slave, subordinate. Worth less than a household pet. I no longer had a voice.
During my imprisonment I had dreamed many times of going skiing in the winter just once. The blue sky, the sun shining on the glistening snow enshrouding the landscape in a pure, flaky blanket. The crunching under your shoes, the cold that turns your cheeks red. And afterwards a hot chocolate, just like after ice-skating.
Priklopil was a good skier who had gone on repeated daytrips to the mountains in the last few years of my imprisonment. While I packed his things, going through his meticulously drawn-up lists, he was very excited. Ski wax. Gloves. Granola bar. Sunscreen. Lip balm. Ski cap. Every time I burned with longing when he locked me in my dungeon and left the house to glide over the snow in the mountains in the sun. I couldn’t have imagined anything more wonderful.
Just before my eighteenth birthday he spoke more often of taking me on such a ski trip one day. For him that was the biggest step towards a normal life. It might have been that he wanted to grant me one of my requests. But most of all he wanted to achieve confirmation that his crime was crowned with success. If I didn’t break my tether in the mountains, in his eyes he would have done everything right.
The preparations took several days. The kidnapper went through his old ski equipment, laying out a number of items for me to try on. One of the anoraks fitted me, a fluffy thing from the 1970s. But I still needed ski trousers. ‘I’ll buy you a pair,’ the kidnapper promised. ‘We’ll go shopping together.’ He sounded excited and seemed happy for a moment.
The day we drove to the Donauzentrum shopping centre, my body had shut down to a bare minimum. I was severely undernourished and could hardly stand up when I got out of the car. It was a peculiar feeling to go back to the shopping centre I had so often strolled through with my parents. Today it is located only two underground stops from Rennbahnweg. Back then you took the bus a couple of stops. The kidnapper obviously felt very, very secure.
The Donauzentrum is a typical shopping centre on the outskirts of Vienna. Shops are lined up, one next to the other, over two floors. It smells of chips and popcorn, and the music is much too loud, and yet hardly drowns out the buzzing voices of innumerable teenagers who congregate in front of the shops for lack of any other place to meet. Even those who are used to such masses of people pretty soon find it too much and yearn for a moment of peace and fresh air. The noise, the lights and the crowds of people felt like a wall, like an impenetrable thicket where I was unable to get my bearings. With effort I tried to remember. Wasn’t that the shop I was once in with my mother? For a fleeting moment I saw myself as a small girl trying on a pair of tights. But the images of the present pushed to the front. There were people everywhere: teenagers, grown-ups with large, colourful bags, mothers with prams, jumbled chaos. The kidnapper directed me towards a large clothing shop. A labyrinth, full of clothes racks, rummage tables and mannequins sporting expressionless smiles and displaying the fashions of the winter season.
The trousers in the adults’ section didn’t fit me. While Priklopil handed me one pair after another in the changing room, a sad figure looked back at me from the mirror. I was as white as a sheet, my blonde hair stood scraggily away from my head and I was so emaciated that I was swimming even in a size XS. The constant dressing and undressing was torture and I refused to repeat the entire procedure in the children’s department. The kidnapper had to hold the ski trousers up in front of my body to check the size. When he was finally satisfied, I could hardly stand any longer.
I was greatly relieved to be in the car again. On the way back to Strasshof my head felt as if it was splitting. After eight years in isolation I was no longer capable of processing so much stimulation.
The ongoing preparations for our ski trip also dampened my happiness. There was primarily an atmosphere of buzzing tension. The kidnapper was agitated and irritated, remonstrating with me about the costs he was incurring on my behalf. He had me work out on the map the exact number of kilometres to the ski resort and calculate how much petrol would be needed for the trip. In addition to the lift pass, ski rental fees, maybe something to eat. In his pathological miserliness these were incredible sums he was squandering. And what for? So that I would probably act up and abuse his trust.
When his fist came crashing down on the tabletop next to me, I dropped the pen in fright. ‘You are only exploiting my benevolence! You are nothing without me. Nothing!’
Don’t answer back when he says that you can’t live without him. I lifted my head and looked at him. And was surprised to see a hint of fear in his contorted face. This ski trip was an enormous risk. A risk that he wasn’t undertaking in order to fulfil a long-standing wish of mine. It was choreographed to enable him to live out his fantasies. Gliding down the slopes with his ‘partner’, she admiring him for being able to ski so well. Perfect outward appearances, a self-image nourished by my humiliation and oppression, by the destruction of my ‘self’.
I lost all desire to play along in this absurd drama. On the way to the garage I told him I wanted to stay home. I saw his eyes darken, then he exploded. ‘What do you think you’re doing!’ he bellowed at me and raised his arm. He was holding the crowbar that he used to open the passageway to my dungeon. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and tried to withdraw into myself. He brought down the crowbar on my upper thigh with all his strength. My skin split open immediately.
He was completely wound up as we drove along the motorway the next day. I, on the other hand, felt only emptiness. He had starved me and turned off my electricity again to discipline me. My leg burned. But now I was okay again, everything was okay, we were going to the mountains. Voices shrilled chaotically in my head:
You somehow have to get hold of the granola bar in the ski jacket.
There’s something left to eat in his bag.
In between, very softly, a small voice said, You have to escape. You have to do it this time.
We exited the motorway near the town of Ybbs. Slowly the mountains emerged from the mist ahead of us. In Göstling we stopped at a ski rental shop. The kidnapper was especially afraid of this step. After all, he had to walk with me into a shop where contact with the employees was unavoidable. They would ask me whether the ski boots fitted, and I would have to answer them.
Before we got out, he barked at me with particular emphasis that he would kill anyone I asked for help – and me as well.
When I opened the car door, a strange feeling of foreignness came over me. The air was cold and tangy, and smelled of snow. The houses stooped along the river and with the caps of snow on their rooftops they looked like pieces of cake with whipped cream. The mountains jutted upwards to the left and right. If the sky had been green I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. That’s how surreal the entire scene seemed to me.
When Priklopil shoved me through the door to the ski rental shop, the warm, humid air hit me in the face. Perspiring people in down jackets stood at the cashier counter, expectant faces, laughter, in between the clacking of the buckles as ski boots were tried on. A sales clerk came up to us. Tanned and jovial, a ski instructor type with a rough, loud voice, who rattled off his standard jokes. He brought me a pair of boots, size 37, and kneeled in front of me to check the fit. Priklopil didn’t take his eyes off me for a second as I told the clerk that they didn’t pinch. I couldn’t have imagined a more unfitting place to call attention to a crime than that shop. Everyone cheerful, everything great; it was all joyful efficiency at the service of leisure-time fun. I said nothing.
‘We can’t ride the ski lift. That’s too dangerous. You could talk to someone,’ said the kidnapper when we had reached the car park of the Hochkar ski resort at the end of a long, winding road. ‘We’ll drive straight up to the slopes.’
We parked the car somewhat further away. The snowy slopes rose steeply to the left and right. Ahead I could see a chair lift. Faintly, I could hear the music from the bar at the lower st
ation in the valley. Hochkar is one of the few ski resorts that is easily accessible from Vienna. It is small; six chair lifts and a couple of shorter tow lifts take the skiers up to the three peaks. The ski runs are narrow; four of them are marked ‘black’, the most advanced category.
I struggled to remember. When I was four, I had been here once with my mother and a family we were friends with. But nothing called to mind the small girl who back then had tramped through the deep snow in a thick pink ski-suit.
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.’
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