Read Online 3,096 Days by Natascha Kampusch - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Natascha Kampusch
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in which the kidnapper had brought me fresh tap water, and hammered with all my might against the wooden panelling. First rhythmically, then energetically until my arm went numb. In the end it was no more than a desperate drumming mixed in with my cries for help. Until the bottle slipped out of my hand.
No one came. No one had heard me, perhaps not even the kidnapper. I collapsed on the mattress exhausted and curled up like a small animal. My cries were transformed into sobs. Crying gave release to my despair at least for a short time and calmed me. It reminded me of my childhood, when I would cry over nothing – and then quickly forget the reason why.
The previous evening my mother had notified the police. When I didn’t come home at the usual time, she first called afterschool care, then the school. Nobody could explain my disappearance. The next day, the police began looking for me. From old newspaper articles I know that hundreds of police officers searched the area around my primary school and my council estate using dogs. There were no clues that would have justified limiting the radius of the search. Back courtyards, side streets and parks were combed, as were the banks of the Danube. Helicopters flew overhead and posters were hung up at every school. Every hour people called with tips, purportedly having seen me in various places. However, none of these tips led in the right direction.
In the first few days of my imprisonment I tried again and again to imagine what my mother must have been doing at that moment. How she would be looking for me everywhere, and how her hope would dwindle from day to day. I missed her so much that the loss I felt threatened to eat me up inside. I would’ve given anything to have had her with me with her power and strength.Looking back, I am amazed how much importance the media has attached to my argument with my mother in the interpretation of my case. As if my leaving without saying goodbye provided insights into my relationship with my mother. Even though I’d felt rejected and disregarded, especially during my parents’ draining separation, it should have been clear to anyone that any child in such an extreme situation would almost automatically be crying out for his or her mother. Without my mother or father, I was without protection, and knowing that they had no news of me saddened me deeply. There were days that my anxious worrying about my parents put a greater strain on me than my own fear. I spent hours thinking about how I might at least communicate to them that I was still alive. So that they wouldn’t completely despair. And so that they wouldn’t give up looking for me.
During the initial time I spent in the dungeon, I hoped every day, every hour, that the door would open and someone would rescue me. The hope that someone couldn’t possibly make me disappear so easily carried me through the endless hours in the cellar. But days and days passed, and no one came. Except for the kidnapper.
Looking back, it seems obvious that he had been planning the abduction for a long time: otherwise why else would he have spent years building a dungeon that could only be opened from the outside and was just barely large enough to allow a person to survive in there? But the kidnapper was, as I witnessed over the years of my imprisonment, a paranoid, fearful person, convinced that the world was evil and that people were after him. It could be just as true that he built the dungeon as a bunker in preparation for a nuclear strike or World War III, as his own place of refuge from all of those he thought were pursuing him.
Nobody today can tell us which answer is the right one. Even statements made by his former co-worker Ernst Holzapfel allow for both interpretations. In a statement to the police, he later saidthat the kidnapper had once asked him how to soundproof a room so that not even a hammer drill could be heard anywhere in the house.
To me, at least, the kidnapper did not
No one came. No one had heard me, perhaps not even the kidnapper. I collapsed on the mattress exhausted and curled up like a small animal. My cries were transformed into sobs. Crying gave release to my despair at least for a short time and calmed me. It reminded me of my childhood, when I would cry over nothing – and then quickly forget the reason why.
The previous evening my mother had notified the police. When I didn’t come home at the usual time, she first called afterschool care, then the school. Nobody could explain my disappearance. The next day, the police began looking for me. From old newspaper articles I know that hundreds of police officers searched the area around my primary school and my council estate using dogs. There were no clues that would have justified limiting the radius of the search. Back courtyards, side streets and parks were combed, as were the banks of the Danube. Helicopters flew overhead and posters were hung up at every school. Every hour people called with tips, purportedly having seen me in various places. However, none of these tips led in the right direction.
In the first few days of my imprisonment I tried again and again to imagine what my mother must have been doing at that moment. How she would be looking for me everywhere, and how her hope would dwindle from day to day. I missed her so much that the loss I felt threatened to eat me up inside. I would’ve given anything to have had her with me with her power and strength.Looking back, I am amazed how much importance the media has attached to my argument with my mother in the interpretation of my case. As if my leaving without saying goodbye provided insights into my relationship with my mother. Even though I’d felt rejected and disregarded, especially during my parents’ draining separation, it should have been clear to anyone that any child in such an extreme situation would almost automatically be crying out for his or her mother. Without my mother or father, I was without protection, and knowing that they had no news of me saddened me deeply. There were days that my anxious worrying about my parents put a greater strain on me than my own fear. I spent hours thinking about how I might at least communicate to them that I was still alive. So that they wouldn’t completely despair. And so that they wouldn’t give up looking for me.
During the initial time I spent in the dungeon, I hoped every day, every hour, that the door would open and someone would rescue me. The hope that someone couldn’t possibly make me disappear so easily carried me through the endless hours in the cellar. But days and days passed, and no one came. Except for the kidnapper.
Looking back, it seems obvious that he had been planning the abduction for a long time: otherwise why else would he have spent years building a dungeon that could only be opened from the outside and was just barely large enough to allow a person to survive in there? But the kidnapper was, as I witnessed over the years of my imprisonment, a paranoid, fearful person, convinced that the world was evil and that people were after him. It could be just as true that he built the dungeon as a bunker in preparation for a nuclear strike or World War III, as his own place of refuge from all of those he thought were pursuing him.
Nobody today can tell us which answer is the right one. Even statements made by his former co-worker Ernst Holzapfel allow for both interpretations. In a statement to the police, he later saidthat the kidnapper had once asked him how to soundproof a room so that not even a hammer drill could be heard anywhere in the house.
To me, at least, the kidnapper did not
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