Irresistible North

by Andrea Di Robilant

  Along the way, we stopped at Rodebaye, a small fishing village. At the bay’s entrance, on a basalt ledge, the carcass of a blue whale had been picked to the bone by local fishermen. Among the shacks that lined the water’s edge was a small house painted bright red where a dour German couple served us cabbage and whale meat.

  As we cruised north the air cooled. It stopped raining and the fog lifted, revealing a bleak arctic landscape. The sea became choppier after we passed Crown Prince Island, as the fast-moving current of the Sullorsuaq Strait ran into the placid waters of Disko Bay. At last we reached the Nugssuaq Peninsula and pulled into the small, ramshackle harbor of Saqqaq. There were two dozen houses scattered haphazardly, a general store and no one in sight. Christian moored his Glastron to a rickety wharf. Then he turned to me and asked, “What is your plan?”

  I had no plan, so I suggested we look for his cousins. Christian grunted and we headed for the village. He told me he used to spend his summers in Saqqaq when he was a kid but hadn’t been back in many years. We knocked on several doors looking for his relatives until we found them inside a pale blue house on a hillock, staring into a large television screen.

  After a round of greetings, we sat down for coffee. All of them had heard of the smoky mountain. Pantomiming the scene, they said the smoke was like the clouds of vapor that shoot out from the back of a whale. But when I pulled out a map of the region and asked them to point out its location, each cousin put his finger in a different place.

  “I know where it is,” said a young man who had been sitting alone in an armchair nursing a backache. “I have been to the mountain.” His name was Tchichus. “One day I was fishing up near Pujortoq and I landed my boat on the rocky beach and climbed halfway up the mountain,” he said, pulling up his chair. “I was frightened by the noise and the heat, and the smoke was suffocating me so I ran back down and I never returned.”

  Tchichus said the mountain was roughly fifty miles up the coast. He did not want to take us there on account of his bad back and his bad memories of the place. And I sensed Christian was not going to risk navigating his way up an unfamiliar, shoal-infested coast without Tchichus’s assistance. It was getting late, the temperature was dropping and I was losing hope of reaching our destination. Then Chris-tian walked over to his cousin and after a brief exchange Tchichus perked up. A few minutes later the three of us were back in the Bowrider. Christian said it was a good thing we had brought extra gasoline. I asked him why his cousin had changed his mind and he grinned: “I told him he could drive my boat on the way back.”

  We moved upstream warily because the canal was full of insidious reefs that were often hidden by ice floes. But we had a great view of the wide plains between the ranges. The field grass had yellowed and the turning leaves of willow brush and blueberry gave the landscape a rich, rusty color. The only sign of human presence along the coast was an isolated hunting lodge—a tiny white dot in an empty valley. “We use it in the winter,” Tchichus said. “As soon as the canal freezes over we ride up from Saqqaq on our dogsleds and hunt deer and caribou.”

  The map indicated that Pujortoq had an altitude of 1,905 meters, but when we came in sight of the mountain, the smoke coming out from the wide openings on the side and center blended with the fast-moving clouds, obscuring the view. Still, it appeared to be far more massive than I had expected. When we got closer I realized it was formed by three mountains, with two dark cleavages down which streams of boiling hot bitumen ran to a wide beach made of small, angular black rocks. Tchichus indicated to us the route he had attempted to follow up the mountain. I could see why he had fled in terror: the mountain was alive and threatening as the burning layers of shale shifted and chafed in its underbelly.

  We bobbed about while I kept peering at the mountain through binoculars. What was I looking for? I had reached my destination. I had found a smoky mountain. I had made my point. Yet I did not want to let go of that unsettling presence, perhaps in the hope of some final revelation.

  The waves were getting bigger. Christian was worried about crashing the boat against the rocks. He nodded to me and we slowly turned away.

  Tchichus was relieved; he took the helm with a big smile and rode the waves back to Saqqaq, swerving between shoals and ice floes. We dropped him off on the pier and I watched him fade in the gloaming as he waved good-bye with one hand and held his aching back with the other. Darkness was falling quickly and we still had a hundred miles to go before reaching home. The clouds were low and navigating across the ice fields in the dark was dangerous. “Every minute counts,” Christian said abruptly. The feeling of safety that had enveloped me since we had left Ilulissat in the morning abandoned me in a rush of adrenaline. As we headed into that gloomy sea, wet and shivering, I wondered for the first time whether I had not gone too far, putting myself in dan-ger for the sake of an old Venetian tale.

  But the clouds cleared after a short while and a shiny moon brightened the arctic night. The cold air seared my lungs. I felt safe again in Christian’s capable hands as he deftly steered his boat. Along the way, luminescent icebergs hovered over us like friendly ghosts. And before long, I saw the twinkling lights of Ilulissat in the distance, straight ahead of us.

  Return to Frislanda

  ONCE THE MEN HAD SAFELY returned to the camp after their expedition to the smoky mountain, Zichmni announced his desire to establish a proper camp in order to explore and map the country. “The air was clean and clear,” Antonio explained, “and the land and the rivers were good.” But the men began to grumble: “They were tired of traveling and many wished to return; they complained that winter was getting closer and that if they waited any longer they would not be able to leave until the following summer. In the end, only those who wanted to stay did so. They kept the large rowboats for themselves. The others were sent back with most of the sailing ships.” It made sense for Zichmni and those who stayed behind to keep most of the large rowboats, which were better suited than the sailing ships for navigation along the coast and deep into the fjords (although he must also have kept at least one and possibly more sailing ships with which to make the return journey, as they could not have built them in Greenland for lack of trees).

  Antonio was not to take part in the exploration of Engroneland. “Against my will,” he added wistfully, “[Zichmni] asked me to take command of the fleet that was returning home.” He took advantage of strong prevailing westerlies and after twenty days of smooth sailing along the sixtieth parallel—the usual route for mariners sailing east—he veered to the south. After another five days he finally saw land. It was the island of Neome (which Nicolò the Younger placed midway between Frisland and Estland on the Zen map). “I knew the island and realized I had traveled beyond Islanda,” Antonio wrote. “Having replenished our stock of supplies, we sailed with good winds and in three days reached Frislanda, where the people greeted us with great joy.”

  When Zichmni returned to Frislanda, possibly as early as the following year, he reported to Antonio that he had managed to chart “both sides of Engroviland [sic],” i.e., the eastern and western coasts of Greenland. Antonio must have copied and sent a chart to Venice because a century and a half later, Nicolò the Younger, usually so imprecise in his mapmaking, used it to draft the most accurate map of Greenland available in those years, not just in Venice but anywhere in Europe.

  After more than a decade spent in Zichmni’s service, Antonio was now ready for the long journey home. In his last letter from Frislanda, he wrote to Venice telling his family he was coming back at last and was bringing with him a book in which he had written down his experiences during the years spent in the north: “I describe in it the countries, the monstrous fish, the customs of the men, the laws of Frislanda, Islanda, Estlanda, the kingdom of Norway, Estotilanda [sic], Drogio, and the deeds of our brother Nicolò, the Chevalier, and his travels to Grolanda.”

  The book included an account of “the life and deeds of Zichmni,” a man “of great valor and goodness” whom A
ntonio had grown to admire. Roughly fifteen years had passed since Zichmni had saved Messer Nicolò and his Venetian crew from the hostile natives after their shipwreck in Frislanda. The book Antonio had put together “and which God willing I shall bring home with me” was the magnificent result of that providential encounter.

  “I will add no more,” Antonio wrote at the end of his letter, anxious to embrace his brothers, his wife, Nicoletta, and his son, Pietro, now a grown boy, “as I hope to be with you soon and to satisfy your curiosity about these and many other things with my own voice.”

  * * *

  1 There are two sources for Erik the Red’s story, The Greenlanders’ Saga (c.1200) and The Saga of Erik the Red (c. 1265).

  2 Frederick Pohl, believing the Zichmni expedition sailed to Nova Scotia instead of Greenland, came to the conclusion that the smoky mountain was Mount Adams, on Nova Scotia’s north shore, facing the Strait of Northumberland.

  3 The referendum was held in November 2008 and approved by 80 percent of the voters; with self-government came legal ownership of Greenland. Greenlanders are now entitled to move on to the final stage of emancipation, full independence, according to their own timetable, but early enthusiasm was dampened by the worldwide economic slump.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Squaring the Circle

  I DOUBT Antonio ever made it back to Venice. I found no trace of a new political or military appointment, no lease of a galley, no deed or official document of any kind, not even a death certificate. Only an indirect reference to him turned up in the archives, which confirmed that he was no longer living in May 1403, when his wife, Nicoletta, bought a Tatar slave and signed the contract as Antonio’s widow (“relicta ser Antonii Zeno”). The most plausible explanation is that he died of some illness or accident or else perished in a storm at sea during his homeward journey. The book that he was carrying and was so eager to show to his family presumably disappeared with him.

  A good deal more is known about Messer Nicolò’s inglorious end. We left him in 1388, as he sailed off to his new duties in Methoni and Koroni, in the Peloponnese. But he was back in Venice the following year, then went off to Treviso to witness the formal act of submission of that city to the Most Serene Republic. He returned to Venice as ducal counselor and in 1391 he headed out once more to the Peloponnese, taking with him his wife, Fantina, and their youngest son, Tommaso. Two years later rumors spread in Venice about some financial wrongdoings on his part. The rumors found their way into official reports, and the prosecuting magistrates started a formal investigation in October 1394. Messer Nicolò was tried in absentia (his son Giovanni testified in his defense) and was found guilty of embezzlement. In January 1396 he was interdicted from public office and ordered to make full restitution and pay a fine of two hundred ducats.

  Messer Nicolò never recovered from the blow. He withdrew to the island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon during the period of interdiction and in 1400 he wrote his final will, leaving most of his possessions to Fantina and his children. I was not able to find a death certificate for him either, but he must have died within the next three years because the family had the will authenticated in 1403.

  It was not the end of the troubles for the Zen brothers. In 1404 Carlo, the popular hero of the war against the Genoese, was accused of having taken bribes during that conflict from a Paduan lord who had sided with the enemy. Carlo was found guilty, although he appears to have been the victim of political machinations. He spent two years in jail and then went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. After his death, in 1418, the Republic reversed the record on his earlier conviction and honored him with a state funeral. Thereafter Venetians revered him as a national hero.

  Messer Nicolò and Antonio, on the other hand, soon faded into obscurity. Their voyages in the northern seas did not open the way to new Venetian trade routes. The state convoys to London and the North Sea went into decline as Venice forsook its maritime vocation to expand its influence on the Italian mainland. In fact, Messer Nicolò’s oldest son, Giovanni, leased one of the last Venetian galleys to travel to London and Flanders, in 1401, suggesting that in the Zen family at least, the lure of the north was strong until the end.

  CARLO’S AND Messer Nicolò’s bloodlines died out, and it was Antonio who ensured the Zens not only survived into the following generations but prospered for several more centuries.

  Antonio’s son Pietro, known as the Dragon in honor of his grandfather, was, like many of his ancestors, a merchant in the Levant. He married Doge Morosini’s niece Anna and died in Damascus around 1425. Pietro’s son, Caterino, became something of a celebrity. He too traded in the east, and amassed a small fortune; he then made an excellent match by marrying Violante Crespo, daughter of the duke of the Greek archipelago. In 1470 the Venetian government sent him to the court of Uzun Hasan, the king of Persia, to try to draw him into a war against the Ottoman Empire. In Persia, Caterino was treated as a member of the royal family (which indeed he was: the king’s wife was Violante’s aunt) and he stayed two years, eventually persuading Uzun Hasan to take up arms against the Turks. Upon his return to Venice, he received a hero’s welcome and lived out his retirement in a large house with a garden he bought on Fondamenta Santa Caterina.

  Caterino’s son, Pietro, built up a successful trade with Constantinople, where he befriended Suleiman the Magnificent. Not surprisingly, he became a strong advocate for peace with the Ottomans and was very influential in shaping Venice’s eastern policy during the dogeship of Andrea Gritti. At the end of his long life, wishing to enlarge the house he had inherited from his father, he bought several adjoining buildings on the same block and set about integrating the various properties into a single palazzo large enough to accommodate his four sons: Francesco, Caterino, Vincenzo and Giovambattista.

  The new building ran the length of the entire block. It was designed by Pietro’s first son, Francesco, with the help of Sebastiano Serlio, an influential Renaissance architect living in Venice at the time. Francesco died in 1538, shortly after construction began. The next year, Pietro, the eighty-four-year-old patriarch, followed his son to the grave. In his will, he instructed his three surviving sons to complete the façade of the palazzo according to Francesco’s drawings, while leaving them free to arrange and decorate the interiors of the building as they wished. The will also specified that the façade and the sides of the palazzo were to be adorned with frescoes of scenes from the family history. The commission was given to Tintoretto, then a promising twenty-year-old artist.

  In the archives of the Museo Correr in Venice I found a sketch of the floor plan showing the three-way partition of the palazzo. Vincenzo moved into the central body; Giovambattista into the western wing. Caterino, the eldest, took over his father’s old apartment, in the eastern wing, with his wife, Gabriella Querini, and their four children: Vincenzo, Ottaviano, Elena and Nicolò the Younger.

  I imagine this was where the letters and charts of Messer Nicolò and Antonio finally came to be stored after being moved around from one Zen residence to another down the generations, and where Nicolò the Younger gathered what remained of those old and tattered documents to piece together his book.

  Having returned to Venice after my own journey to Frislanda, as it were, I made my way back to the crooked old palace on the Fondamenta Santa Caterina, this time to linger on the narrow embankment, nose up in the air, to take a better look at the decrepit façade.

  The palazzo, which no longer belonged to the Zen family, was divided into many apartments. It had an unusual architectural style that combined elements of Venetian Renaissance and Gothic revival. But there were deliberate oriental touches that seemed designed to reflect the family’s long association with the Levant. I was struck by a decorative frieze that ran under the high cornice along the length of the façade. It was so blackened by soot that it was impossible to make out the motif from where I was standing. Giovanni Sarpellon, the amiable Venetian gentleman who lived on the top floor, was kind enough to invite
me up to his apartment. Leaning precariously out of the window of his living room, I observed up close a lovely relief of small chariots, palm trees, gazelles and camels loaded with merchandise—an oriental scene no doubt familiar to successive generations of Zens. But farther down the cornice, the frieze took on a marine-life motif with large fish—dolphins? whales? cod?—leaping about in perfect symmetry. And I wondered—on the basis of nothing but my own fancy—whether these might not be a reference to the Zen voyages in the northern seas.

  The original group of medieval houses (at center, facing the canal) purchased by Caterino Zen and his son Pietro on Fondamenta Santa Caterina. They were torn down and replaced by Palazzo Zen in the sixteenth century. (illustration credit 8.1)

  The external frescoes, painted by the young Tintoretto and his collaborator, Andrea Meldolla, had long been erased by time and humidity. Indeed, the walls had peeled so thoroughly in the previous five centuries that only the crumbling brickwork was visible. But the building was more protected on the far western side, and above a window on the piano nobile, a small patch of dark pigment—perhaps the last fragment of the original fresco—dotted the wall like an age spot on a crinkled old face.

  The marble plaque honoring Messer Nicolò and Antonio for their travels in the northern seas was on the corner of the eastern wing, beneath the window of what must have been Nicolò the Younger’s apartment. The nineteenth-century tablet had been covered with soot when I had seen it the first time, but someone had apparently come to clean it in the meantime because the marble slab was now quite resplendent and the script clearly legible.

  NICOLÒ THE Younger never became the historian he had hoped to be. The book on the Zen voyages was the last he published. Perhaps the mysterious disappearance of his longtime printer, Marcolini, had something to do with the end of his writing career—shortly after the publication of the Zen book, Marcolini traveled to Verona and was never seen or heard of again. It is also possible that the oppressive atmosphere of the Counter-Reformation discouraged Nicolò the Younger from pursuing his literary ambitions. Whatever the case, he put aside his writing projects and concentrated on his career as a public servant.