3,096 Days in Captivity

Absurdly enough, I asked him first what size shoes he wore. I had remembered that from watching TV shows like Aktenzeichen XY ungelöst.² You had to be able to give an exact description of the perpetrator; even the slightest detail was important. Naturally, I didn’t get an answer. Instead the man snapped at me to be quiet and nothing would happen to me. Even today I don’t know how I managed to get up enough courage to disregard his order. Maybe because I was certain that I was going to die anyway—that things couldn’t get any worse.

“Are you going to molest me?” was my next question.

This time I got an answer. “You’re too young for that,” he said. “I would never do that.” Then he made another phone call.

After he had hung up he said, “I’m going to take you to a forest and turn you over to the others. Then I’ll be able to wash my hands of this business.” He repeated that sentence several times, rapid-fire and agitated: “I will turn you over, and then I’ll have nothing more to do with you. We’ll never see each other again.”

If he had intended to scare me, then he had found exactly the right words. The pronouncement that he was going to hand me over to “others” took my breath away. I went rigid with fear. He didn’t need to say anything more; I knew what he meant. Child pornography rings had been all over the media for months. Since last summer hardly a week had gone by without some discussion of the people who abducted and molested children while filming it on video. In my mind’s eye I saw everything perfectly: groups of men would pull me into a basement and grope me all over while others took pictures. Up until that moment I had been convinced that I was soon going to die. What seemed in store for me now appeared even worse.

I don’t remember how long we drove until we came to a stop. We were in a pine forest like the many found on the outskirts of Vienna. The kidnapper turned off the engine and made another phone call. Something appeared to have gone wrong. “They’re not coming. They’re not here!” he cursed to himself. He seemed frightened, agitated. But maybe that was also just a trick: maybe he wanted me to take his side against these “others” he was supposed to hand me over to and who had left him hanging; maybe he had just made them up to increase my fear and to paralyse me.

The kidnapper got out and ordered me not to move. I obeyed silently. Hadn’t Jennifer wanted to flee from such a car? How had she tried to do that? And what had she done wrong? My thoughts were all jumbled up inside my head. If he hadn’t locked the door, I could maybe open it. But then what? In just two strides he’d be on me. I couldn’t run very fast. I had no idea what forest we were in and what direction I should run in. And then there were the “others” who were supposed to come and get me, who could be anywhere. I pictured it vividly in my mind, how they would chase me, grab me and throw me to the ground. And then I saw myself as a corpse in the woods, buried under a pine tree.

I thought of my parents. My mother would come to pick me up from afterschool care in the afternoon. And the woman who ran the programme would say to her, “But Natascha hasn’t been here!” My mother would be beside herself and I had no way to protect her. It cut my heart to think of her coming to get me and not finding me. “What could happen anyway?” I had thought as I had left that morning without saying a word of goodbye, without giving her a kiss. You never know if we’ll ever see each other again.

The kidnapper’s words made me jump. “They’re not coming.” Then he got back in the car, started the engine and drove off again.

This time I recognized the gables and rooftops of the houses that I could just make out through the narrow strips of window along the sides. I could tell where he was steering the car to—back to the edge of the city and then onto the arterial road leading towards the town of Gänserndorf.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To Strasshof,” the kidnapper said forthrightly.

As we drove through Süssenbrunn, a deep sadness engulfed me. We passed my mother’s old shop, which she had recently closed down. Just three weeks before she would have been sitting here at the desk in the mornings, doing the office work. I could still picture her and I wanted to cry out, but I only produced a weak whimper when we drove by the street that led to my grandmother’s house. Here I had spent the happiest moments of my childhood.

The car came to a standstill in a garage. The kidnapper ordered me to remain lying down on the floor in the back and turned the engine off. Then he got out, fetched a blue blanket, threw it over me and wrapped me up tight. I could hardly breathe, and I was surrounded by absolute darkness. When he picked me up like a wrapped package and carried me out of the car, panic struck me. I had to get out of that blanket. And I had to go to the toilet.

My voice sounded muffled and foreign under the blanket when I asked him to put me down and let me go to the toilet. He stopped for a moment, then unwrapped me and led me through a hallway to a small guest toilet. From the hallway I was able to catch a glimpse of the adjoining rooms. The furnishings appeared fusty and expensive—yet another indication to me that I had really fallen victim to a crime. In the TV police shows that I knew, criminals always had large houses with expensive furnishings.

The kidnapper stood in front of the door and waited. I immediately locked the door and breathed a sigh of relief. But the moment of relief lasted only a few seconds. The room had no windows and I was trapped. The only way out was through the door and I couldn’t stay locked behind that door forever. Especially as it would have been easy for him to break it open.

When I came out of the toilet after a while, the kidnapper wrapped me up in the blanket again: darkness, stuffiness. He lifted me up and I felt him carry me several steps downwards: a cellar? Once at the bottom of the stairs, he laid me on the floor, pulled on the blanket to move me forward, threw me again over his shoulder and continued onwards. It seemed an eternity before he put me down again. Then I heard his footsteps moving away from me.

I held my breath and listened. Nothing. There was absolutely nothing to hear. Still, it was a long time before I dared to cautiously peel the blanket off. There was absolute darkness all around. It smelled of dust and the stale air was strangely warm. Beneath me I could feel the cold, naked floor. I rolled myself into a ball on the blanket and whimpered softly. My own voice sounded so peculiar in the silence that I became frightened and stopped. I don’t remember how long I remained lying there. At first I tried to count the seconds and the minutes. Twenty-one, twenty-two . . . I mumbled to myself, to time the length of the seconds. I tried to keep track of the minutes on my fingers. I kept losing count, and I couldn’t allow that to happen, not now! I had to concentrate, remember every detail! But I quickly lost all sense of time. The darkness, the odour that caused disgust to well up in me—all of this lay upon me like a black cloth.

When the kidnapper came back, he had brought a light bulb that he screwed into a fixture on the wall. The harsh light that blazed outwards so suddenly blinded me and brought no relief—because now I could see where I was. The room was small and empty, the walls covered with wood panelling; a bare pallet bed was affixed to the wall on hooks. The floor was light-coloured laminate. A toilet with no lid stood in the corner and a double stainless-steel sink was along one wall.

Was this what a criminal gang’s secret hiding place looked like? A sex club? The walls covered in light-coloured wood reminded me of a sauna and triggered a chain of ideas: sauna in the basement—child molester—criminal. I pictured fat, sweaty men setting upon me. For me a sauna in the basement was the place people like that lured their victims in order to molest them. But there was no stove and none of those wooden buckets that you usually see in saunas.

The kidnapper instructed me to stand in front of him at a certain distance and not to move. Then he began to remove the wooden pallet bed and to unscrew from the wall the hooks that had been holding it up. During all of this, he spoke to me in a voice that people usually reserve for household pets: gentle and placating. I was not to be afraid, everything was going to be all right, if only I would do what he told me. He looked at me the way the proud owner looks at his new car; or worse—like a child eyeing his new toy, full of anticipation and at the same time uncertain of everything he can do with it.

After some time my panic began to subside and I got up the courage to address him. I begged him to let me go: “I won’t tell anybody anything. If you let me go, nobody will notice anything. I’ll just say that I ran away. If you don’t keep me overnight, nothing will happen to you.” I tried to explain to him that he had just committed a grave mistake, that they were already looking for me and were certain to find me. I appealed to his sense of responsibility and I begged for sympathy. But it was no use. He made it unequivocally clear to me that I would be spending the night in this dungeon.

Had I been able to foresee that this room would be both my refuge and my prison for 3,096 nights, I don’t know how I would have reacted. Looking back today, I realize that just knowing I would have to remain in the basement that first night triggered a reaction that probably saved my life—and was dangerous as well. What appeared to be outside the realm of the thinkable was now a fact: I was locked in the basement of a criminal and I was not going to be freed, at least not today. A shockwave passed through my world, and reality shifted just a little. I accepted what had happened and, instead of railing against my new situation with desperation and indignation, I acquiesced. As an adult you know that you give up a little piece of yourself whenever you have to tolerate circumstances that, before they occur, are completely outside the realm of the imagination. A crack appears in the foundation on which your own personality rests. And yet adapting is the only correct response, as it ensures your survival. Children act more intuitively. I was intimidated and did not resist, but rather I began to make myself at home—at least for one night.

With hindsight it seems to me quite bizarre how my panic gave way to a kind of pragmatism. How quickly I comprehended that my pleading would be futile and every additional word would bounce right off this strange man. How instinctively I felt that I had to accept the situation in order to get through this one endless night in the cellar.

When the kidnapper had unscrewed the pallet bed from the wall, he asked me what I required. An absurd situation, as if I were staying the night in a hotel and had forgotten my toiletries. “A hairbrush, a toothbrush, toothpaste and a toothbrush cup. An empty yogurt cup will do.” I was functioning.

He explained to me that he would have to go to Vienna to fetch a mattress for me from his flat there.

“Is this your house?” I asked, but received no answer. “Why can’t you keep me in your flat in Vienna?”

He said that it would be too dangerous: thin walls, nosy neighbours, I might scream. I promised him I would be quiet if he would only take me to Vienna. But it was no use.

The moment he left the room, walking backwards, and locked the door, my survival strategy started to waver. I would have done anything to get him to stay or take me with him; anything so as not to be alone.

I crouched on the floor. My arms and legs felt strangely numb and it was difficult to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth. My thoughts centred on school, as I sought to impose a chronological structure that I could hold on to. But I had long lost any sense of time. What subject would be being taught right now? Was the long lunchtime break over already? When did they notice that I wasn’t coming today? And when would they realize that I wouldn’t be coming anymore? Would they tell my parents? How would they react?

The thought of my parents brought tears to my eyes. But I mustn’t cry. I had to be strong, remain in control. An Indian knows no pain and, besides, tomorrow everything would most certainly be over. And then everything would be all right again. Moved by the shock of almost having lost me, my parents would get back together and treat me with love. I pictured them sitting together eating at the table, full of pride and admiration as they asked me how I had coped so well with everything. I imagined my first day back at school. Would they laugh at me? Or would they celebrate me as a miracle because I had escaped while all the others who had had similar experiences had ended up as corpses in a pond or in the woods? I imagined how triumphant it would be—and also a bit embarrassing—when they all crowded around me, tirelessly asking, “Did the police rescue you?” Would the police be able to rescue me at all? How would they be able to find me? “How were you able to escape?” “Where did you get the courage to escape?” Would I even have the courage to escape?

Panic was once again creeping up inside me. I had no idea how I was supposed to get out of here. On TV you just “overpowered” criminals. But how? Would I even have to kill him perhaps? I knew that you could die from a stab to the liver. I had read that in the newspaper. But where was the liver exactly? Would I be able to find the right location? What was I supposed to stab with anyway? And was I capable of doing it? Killing a person, me, a little girl? My thoughts turned to God. Would it be permissible in my situation for me to kill someone, even if I had no other choice? Thou shalt not kill. I tried to remember whether we had discussed that commandment in religion classes—and whether there were exceptions in the Bible. I couldn’t think of any.

A muffled noise tore me from my thoughts. The kidnapper was back.

He had with him a narrow, approximately eight-centimetre-thick foam mat that he placed on the floor. It looked as if it were Austrian army issue, or a cover from a sunlounger. When I sat down on it, the air immediately came whooshing out of the thin fabric, and I once again felt the hard floor beneath me. The kidnapper had brought me everything I had asked for. Even biscuits. Butter biscuits with a thick layer of chocolate on them. My favourite biscuits, which I was actually no longer allowed to eat because I was too chubby. I associated these biscuits with an unbridled longing and a series of humiliating moments: that look when somebody said to me, “But you weren’t going to eat that. You’re too plump anyway”; the shame, when all the other children reached for one and my hand was held back; and the feeling of pleasure when the chocolate slowly melted in my mouth.

My hands began to shake as the kidnapper opened the packet of biscuits. I wanted to have them, but my mouth went completely dry out of fear and nervousness. I knew that I would not be able to get them down. He held the package under my nose until I took one out, which I crumbled up into small pieces. As I did so, a couple of pieces of chocolate broke off, which I put in my mouth. I could not eat any more than that.

After a while, the kidnapper turned away from me and walked over to my school bag, which lay on the floor in a corner. When he picked it up and got ready to go, I begged him to leave me the bag—the thought of losing the only personal items I had with me in this unsettling environment made me feel completely at sea. He stared at me with a confused expression on his face, saying, “You could have hidden a transmitter in there and you could use it to call for help. You’re trying to trick me and you’re playing the innocent on purpose! You’re smarter than you admit to!”

The sudden change in his mood frightened me. Had I done something wrong? And what kind of transmitter was I supposed to have in my bag, which contained only my packed snacks, aside from a couple of books and writing utensils? At the time I had no clue why he was behaving so strangely. Today I realize that those words were the first indication that the kidnapper was paranoid and mentally ill. Back then there were no such transmitters that children could have been given so that they could be located—and even today, where the possibility exists, it is highly unusual. However, the kidnapper believed there was a real danger that I could have had such a futuristic means of communication hidden in my bag. So real that in his delusion he was afraid that a small child would bring tumbling down the world that existed only in his head.

His role in that world shifted lightning fast: one moment he seemed to want to make my forced incarceration in his basement as pleasant as possible; the next moment he saw me—a small girl with no strength, no weapon and certainly no transmitter—as an enemy who was out to get him. I had fallen victim to a crazy person and had become a play figure in the sick world inside his head. But back then I did not recognize that. I knew nothing about mental illness, about compulsions and delusional disorders that create a different reality within the person suffering from them. I treated him like any other adult whose thoughts and motives I would never have been able to see through as a child.

My begging and pleading was futile; the kidnapper took my rucksack and turned to the door. It opened inwards and had no handle on the inside of the dungeon, but rather a small, round knob so loosely attached to the wood that you could even pull it out.

As the door clicked shut, I began to cry. I was all alone, locked in a bare room somewhere beneath the earth. Without my rucksack, without the sandwiches my mother had made for me just hours before. Without the napkins they were wrapped up in. It felt as if he had torn a piece of me away, as if he had cut off my connection to my mother and my old life.

I cowered in a corner on the mattress and whimpered softly to myself. The wood-panelled walls seemed to be moving in on me; the ceiling seemed to be caving downwards. My breathing was rapid and shallow—I could hardly get any air—while my fear kept closing in around me. It was a horrific feeling.

As an adult I’ve often reflected on how I managed to live through that moment. The situation was so frightening that it could have shattered me. But the human mind can cope with the most astonishing situations—by tricking itself and withdrawing so as not to have to capitulate when faced with circumstances that cannot be logically comprehended.

Today I know that I regressed psychologically. The mind of the ten-year-old girl I was regressed back to that of a small child four or five years of age. A child that accepted the world around her as a given, for whom not the logical perception of reality, but rather the small rituals of a child’s daily life offered the fixed points of reference that we require in order to have that feeling of normality—to keep from completely breaking down. My situation was so far out of the scope of anything anyone could possibly fathom that I subconsciously regressed to that stage: I felt small, at the mercy of someone else and free of responsibility. That person who was later to return to my dungeon was the only adult present and therefore the person of authority who would know what was to be done. I would only have to do what he asked and everything would be all right. Then everything would proceed as it always did: the bedtime ritual, my mother’s hand on my duvet, the goodnight kiss and an attachment figure who would leave a night-light on and quietly tiptoe out of the room.

This intuitive withdrawal into the mental state of a small child was the second important transformation that took place the first day of my imprisonment. It was the desperate attempt to create a small, familiar oasis in a hopeless situation. When the kidnapper came back to the dungeon later, I asked him to stay with me, to put me to bed properly and to tell me a goodnight story. I even asked him for a goodnight kiss like my mother used to give me before softly closing the door to my room behind her. Everything to preserve the illusion of normality. And he played along. He took a reader with fairy tales and short stories out of my book bag, which he had put down somewhere in the dungeon, laid me down on the mattress, covered me with a thin blanket and sat down on the floor. Then he began to read The Princess and the Pea, Part 2. In the beginning he kept stumbling over the words. Almost timidly and in a soft voice, he told me the story of the prince and the princess. At the end he kissed my forehead. For a moment I felt like I was lying in a soft bed in a safe child’s bedroom. He even left the light on.

It was only when the door closed behind him that the protective illusion burst like a bubble.

I could not sleep that night. I tossed and turned uneasily on the thin mattress in the clothes that I had not wanted to take off. The outfit that made me look so shapeless was the last thing that remained of my life from that day on.