ONE DAY IN THE BUILDING OF THE BELLINI
WHAT DO HARRY’S BAR, the neighboring Piazza San Marco, and the late, lamented Bellini restaurant in New York City have in common? They all share a building history. Harry’s Bar, from the time my mother found it till the time my father opened it, took three months to complete. Raw warehouse space to gleaming new restaurant without a hitch. Its neighbor, the Piazza San Marco, took a bit longer, of course, but in all fairness its story begins in the ninth century, roughly a millennium (give or take a century) before Harry’s Bar opened.
The Piazza San Marco is named, as we are told in school, after Mark the Evangelist, whose bodily remains were brought there from Alexandria in A.D. 829 after being stolen by a group of intrepid Venetians. According to legend, the relics were smuggled out under slices of pork. A church was built to house the relics but burned down in A.D. 976, taking all worldly trace of Saint Mark with it — or so it was believed for some nine hundred years, until the day the present Basilica of San Marco was consecrated after remodeling in 1904, when the remains were rediscovered miraculously on the very same spot they would have lain in the original church.
The Torre dell’Orologio, or Clock Tower, that has graced San Marco since the late 1400s also had a bloody birth. It seems that the inventors of the clock mechanism were rewarded for their labors by having their eyes gouged out to ensure they would not repeat their engineering feat for some competing European capital.
Another landmark of the square, the great Campanile tower, was originally built in the sixteenth century. One day in 1902, it collapsed without warning, killing the custodian’s cat. Finding the sight of a decapitated Piazzo San Marco unbearable, the Venetians promptly took up a collection to finance the reconstruction of the tower “as it was, where it was,” which was completed in 1912.
At the entrance to San Marco, just down the quay from Harry’s Bar, stand the two twelfth-century columns that once served as a kind of city gate when Venice was accessible only from the sea. The architect of the columns, Nicolò Baratari, who also designed the first Rialto Bridge, was rewarded for his labors with a license to set up gambling tables between them. Later, the columns marked a less jolly sight, for it was here that criminals were executed until the mid-eighteenth century. Even today, superstitious Venetians will not be seen walking between these two towers.
But the heart of the piazza is, of course, the beautiful Doge’s Palace, for centuries the only house in Venice that was honored with the name palazzo, an other dwellings being relegated to the class of the casa, “house,” or ca’ for short. Built in the fourteenth century and completely remodeled over the next four hundred years, the palace has a beautiful white-and-pink marble façade. What went on inside was not always so cheery. It was here, in the Room of the Cord, that suspects were interrogated while hanging from their wrists. Those who were found guilty were led over the Bridge of Sighs, so named because prisoners were heard to sigh as they glimpsed their last ray of sunlight before disappearing into the prison across the canal.
It took about twelve workmen three months to complete Harry’s Bar. It took hundreds if not thousands of masons and master carpenters and roofers to build (and rebuild) the basilica, palazzo, and Campanile. The men who installed the first wooden piles underneath these buildings knew that they would never see them finished during their lifetimes. The Bellini restaurant four thousand miles west in the fair city of New York was a different story. I took notes during the ordeal. The following is taken from my diary of the time.
On the stroke of eight o’clock one Wednesday morning in March 1987, four metalworkers walked into the kitchen of a restaurant under construction in the Hotel Taft on Seventh Avenue. So in addition to the electricians, plumbers, and general workmen, now there were these four metalworkers.
Jerry was very young and very fat. He may have been strong but mostly he was flab, with a not-very-intelligent baby face. Tom had a beard. He was probably the brightest of the four, but he had no ideas of his own. He did what he was told. Timmy might have been forty, but he looked much older, with his gray hair and mustache and the watery eyes of a heavy smoker. He was the spitting image of Andy Capp. Barney could have been the down-on-his-luck maître d’ of a Bronx brothel. He did absolutely nothing, but he was the boss.
That morning Barney said, “We’ve got to put up some shelves.”
“Where are they?” Jerry asked.
“I think in those cardboard boxes,” Barney answered.
“Let’s check it out,” said Tom. He picked up one of the boxes and started to remove the tape.
“They look like shelves,” he said.
Barney asked, “Who’s going for the coffee?”
“I’ll go,” Tom volunteered.
Everyone took out a dollar bill, and Barney counted each one carefully.
“Make mine with milk,” said Barney.
They all sat down on the crates scattered around the kitchen. They talked about what they were going to do on the weekend. After all, it was already Wednesday.
Ten minutes later Tom came back with the coffee.
They lighted cigarettes and spent another ten minutes drinking coffee. By then it was almost nine o’clock.
“Come on, fellows, let’s get these goddamn shelves up.”
“How do they want them?” Jerry asked.
“What do you mean, how do they want them?”
“Three shelves high, four? Or maybe five?”
“Good question,” Barney said.
“Better ask Frank,” Timmy suggested.
“Anybody seen Frank?” Tom asked.
“No,” the others replied, a New York chorus.
“Then we’ll have to wait,” said Barney. They sat down again on the crates and lighted cigarettes.
A half hour later Frank, the superintendent, came by.
“Hey,” Barney yelled, “can you tell us how to put up these goddamn shelves?”
“The same way you always do,” Frank answered.
“Very funny,” said Barney. “We want to know how many shelves in each row.”
“And how far off the floor do you want the bottom shelf, and how far down from the ceiling the top one,” Jerry added.
“That’s right,” Barney nodded. “We wanna know how damn high we have to begin.”
“Start a foot off the floor and finish a foot from the ceiling. Six shelves each,” said Frank.
“Now you’re talking,” Barney said.
“Okay,” said Frank, “get to work.”
“What’s the hurry? Is there a fire somewhere?” Timmy asked.
Frank wandered off, presumably to deal with his next major problem.
“I don’t understand,” Barney shook his head. “First they don’t tell you a damn thing, then you have to do everything in a hurry. Okay, guys, let’s unpack these damn shelves.”
Tom finished tearing open the carton and pulled out three steel shelves and four corner posts. “There’s only three shelves in here,” he said.
“Maybe you need two boxes to make up one set of shelves,” Jerry said, “but that’ll mean four posts left over.”
“Good thinking,” said Barney. “We’d better ask Frank what to do. Tom, go see if you can find Frank.”
They all sat back down on the crates.
“I don’t like this job. There’s nothing exciting about it,” said Jerry.
“Jerry,” Barney said, “look in another carton. Maybe there’s more than three shelves in one of these damn boxes.”
Jerry tore open another box. “Nope,” he said, “there are only three here, too.”
“So we’re screwed,” said Barney. “We’ll just have to wait for Frank.”
A half hour later Frank came by.
“Why aren’t the shelves up?” Frank said.
“Because if we put up six shelves each, we’ll have four posts left over for each one.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Frank said.
“These guys must have money to burn,” Barney remarked.
“That’s none of your business,” Frank said.
“Just talking,” Barney replied. “Okay, guys, let’s get to work.”
“It’s almost noon,” said Timmy. “We’d better knock off for lunch.”
“Right,” said Barney. “We’ll finish the job after lunch.”
All four went out to Seventh Avenue into the roar of traffic. Tom stopped to look at the gleaming gold watches a black man was hawking.
“What are you doing?” Barney asked.
“Looking at the watches,” Tom replied. “They really look good!”
“They’re fakes, for Christ’s sake. Everybody knows that. C’mon!” Barney said.
They went into the café on the corner of Fifty-sixth Street and ordered hamburgers. While they ate, they continued talking about the shelving. An hour later they went back to the kitchen of the hopefully soon-to be restaurant. Frank was waiting for them.
“There’s a truck to unload,” he said.
“A truckload of what?” Barney asked.
“Steel tables and a couple of ovens.”
“Then you’ll have to get two electricians as well,” said Barney.
“They’re already here,” said Frank.
“Okay, guys,” said Barney, “let’s move it.”
They went back out onto Seventh Avenue, and there was Sammy’s truck.
Sammy was a young, very big Puerto Rican who owned his own truck; a nice white truck with enormous red letters on the side — THE GOLDEN SAMMY — surrounded by thousands of red stars.
“What’s to unload?” Barney asked.
“Stuff that’s probably too heavy for you weaklings,” said Sammy.
They all laughed, but they weren’t sure why.
Sammy got out and opened the rear door.
There was a bottle of Bacardi rum and a bottle of Pepsi-Cola in the corner. Sammy opened the rum and took a long swig. Then he took a sip of the Pepsi.
“Tomorrow is my big day,” he said. “I’ll be thirty!”
“What a coincidence!” exclaimed Barney, “tomorrow’s my birthday too!”
“And your sister’s, too,” said Sammy. He swung the iron ramp down to the asphalt pavement.
“A table and two ovens,” Sammy said.
“Let’s take the table first,” said Barney.
“That leaves us out,” said one of the electricians, who had stopped what they were doing to be present at the unloading of the ovens.
“Go back to work,” Timmy said. “We’ll call you when we’re ready with the ovens.”
“Nice table,” Jerry said caressing it. “Stainless steel. A real honey.”
“Timmy,” Barney said, “would you go get some coffee. That goddamn hamburger is giving me a royal pain in the gut.”
While they waited for Timmy, they all sat down on the back of truck dangling their legs.
Sammy kept on swigging from the two bottles.
A half hour went by, and there was no sign of Timmy.
“Jerry,” Barney said, “go see what’s happened to Timmy. All this smoking has given me a headache.”
After a while Timmy arrived. There was a woman with him. She was about his age.
“Let me introduce my wife,” Timmy said.
They all got down from the truck, quickly wiped their hands on seat of their pants, and said, “Pleased to meet you.”
“How do you manage to live with this guy?” Barney asked.
“We’ve been together twenty years,” the woman replied. “I’m used to him by now.”
“See?” Tom turned to Sammy, “you can get used to anything in life.”
Sammy, drunk by now, nodded vacantly. He had trouble focusing on the men standing in front of him.
“Come on,” he said, “we’ve got to get this truck unloaded. My wife is waiting for me at home.”
“If that’s all,” said Timmy, “better to keep her waiting.”
Sammy had difficulty climbing up on the truck. He started to move the table, and when he got it down the ramp to street level, the four metalworkers lifted it and carried it to the head of the stairs leading to the kitchen. Sammy followed them, swaying visibly.
“Hey,” he shouted, “be careful on the stairs. That’s valuable stuff!”
They stopped at the head of the stairs to decide whether to carry it right side up or upside down.
Jerry said it was better up. Tom insisted on turning it upside down. Barney said, “Let’s get a nice big cardboard carton and slide it down.”
“Good thinking,” said Timmy. “I’ll go find a carton.”
“Go ask Frank,” said Barney.
Timmy disappeared down the steps, and his wife said good-bye to the others.
“When’ll you be home?” she yelled after Timmy.
“Can’t you see how much there is to do!” he called up to her. “Not before eight.”
Fifteen minutes later he was back with a large piece of cardboard.
“Good boy,” said Barney.
They turned the table upside down and set it on the cardboard.
Timmy and Tom went down a few steps, and Sammy took hold of the two front legs.
“Okay, push the damn table.” Tom shouted.
Sammy was sweating like a pig. He pushed the table toward the stairs, and when it was on the edge, Tom and Timmy gripped it from below and slowly moved backward, sliding it down step by step.
“Easy,” said Barney, standing behind Sammy. “Don’t hurt yourselves.”
Sammy sat down on the top step and said: “I’ll bet that damn table is worth a fortune.”
A half hour later they all emerged from the kitchen.
“I need coffee before we get those ovens,” Barney said. “I’ll go this time.”
It was two thirty. They were still standing at the back of the truck.
“We’ll have to do overtime if we’re ever going to finish,” said Barney.
“Who’s willing to stay?” he asked.
“I can’t,” said Tom.
“I can’t either.” Jerry wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I can only stay till three.”
“Go call the electricians,” Barney said.
Jerry came back in a while. “They said it’s too late now, and they can’t do overtime either.”
“That just leaves the two of us, me and Timmy,” said Barney, “and the Puerto Rican drunk.”
“Even drunk, I’m stronger than all you put together,” said Sammy, staggering.
He got up on the truck and began to push the heavy oven all by himself.
“Hey, man!” Barney shouted. “Wait for us. You’ll hurt yourself.” One of them stood on the ramp, and the other climbed up on the truck.
Sammy got behind the oven and began to push with all his might until the oven tipped onto the ramp.
“Hold it,” Timmy yelled. He had both hands on the oven and was ready to take it as it tipped onto the ramp. Barney joined him as Sammy gave it a last push.
“Careful,” said Timmy. The oven weighed dangerously on his arms, and Barney’s hands were weak. As boss, he wasn’t used to this hard work. The oven started to slide down the ramp, and Timmy couldn’t stop it by himself. Timmy and Barney were both yelling, and Sammy was laughing at the back of the truck. The oven gained speed and smashed onto the asphalt with a deafening thud.
Sammy stopped laughing. He eyed the disaster with a stupid smile. Barney and Timmy got an iron pipe to lever the dented oven up onto an oversized dolly. Then they pushed it to the door, edged it inside, and closed the door.
“Three o’clock,” said Barney. “Time to quit.”
“Damn right,” Timmy said.
Sammy was in his truck. “Hey,” he yelled, “what am I supposed to do with this other oven?”
“Bring it back tomorrow,” Barney said. “Bright and early, okay? We start at eight sharp.”
Sammy got back down from the truck, pulled up the ramp, and slammed the rear door shut. He scrambled into the cabin, started the engine, and with a belch and a hiccup the truck lurched forward. At Fiftieth Street, Sammy slumped over to the left, and the truck careened frighteningly around the corner.
I couldn’t help thinking, as I watched my metalworkers knock off for the day: first, Did the builders of San Marco ever have days like this? and second, Was there a chance, however slim, that the Bellini would ever open?