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. Everythingto 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.
3
Hoping in Vain for Rescue
My First Weeks in the Dungeon
‘The Austrian authorities are focusing on the disappearance of a girl, the ten-year-old Natascha Kampusch. Natascha was last seen on 2 March. Her route to school, where she was last seen, is relatively long. Reportedly, a girl in a red anorak was pulled into a white van.’
Aktenzeichen XY ungelöst
, 27 March 1998
I had listened to the kidnapper for quite some time before he came into the dungeon the next day. Back then I did not know how well the entrance was secured – but I could tell from the sounds gradually coming nearer that it took him a long time to open my dungeon.
I was standing in the corner, my eyes glued to the door, when he entered the room which measured five square metres. He seemed younger than on the day of my abduction: a lanky man with soft, youthful features. His brown hair was neatly parted, like a model pupil at a proper university-preparatory school. His face was gentle and at first glance seemed to promise nothing evil. It was only when you observed him for a longer period of time that you noticed the traces of madness that lurked behind his conservative, bourgeois exterior, an exterior that wouldn’t begin to show deep cracks until later.
I immediately pelted him with questions:
‘When are you going to let me go?’
‘Why are you keeping me here?’
‘What are you going to do with me?’
He gave me one-syllable answers and registered each one of my movements as you would if you were keeping an eye on a captive animal. Not
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. Everythingto 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.
3
Hoping in Vain for Rescue
My First Weeks in the Dungeon
‘The Austrian authorities are focusing on the disappearance of a girl, the ten-year-old Natascha Kampusch. Natascha was last seen on 2 March. Her route to school, where she was last seen, is relatively long. Reportedly, a girl in a red anorak was pulled into a white van.’
Aktenzeichen XY ungelöst
, 27 March 1998
I had listened to the kidnapper for quite some time before he came into the dungeon the next day. Back then I did not know how well the entrance was secured – but I could tell from the sounds gradually coming nearer that it took him a long time to open my dungeon.
I was standing in the corner, my eyes glued to the door, when he entered the room which measured five square metres. He seemed younger than on the day of my abduction: a lanky man with soft, youthful features. His brown hair was neatly parted, like a model pupil at a proper university-preparatory school. His face was gentle and at first glance seemed to promise nothing evil. It was only when you observed him for a longer period of time that you noticed the traces of madness that lurked behind his conservative, bourgeois exterior, an exterior that wouldn’t begin to show deep cracks until later.
I immediately pelted him with questions:
‘When are you going to let me go?’
‘Why are you keeping me here?’
‘What are you going to do with me?’
He gave me one-syllable answers and registered each one of my movements as you would if you were keeping an eye on a captive animal. Not
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