The Writer As Explorer

A house just as confusing as the story, Rooms by the Sea, by Nicholas Christopher, tells a story based on the painting “Rooms by the Sea.” In this short story, we meet Carmen Ronson, the great-granddaughter of Claudine Rementeria, an author of a book that coincidentally has the name of the painting as the title. Rementeria originally wrote the book to please her husband, using her native tongue, Euskara, and having a few English translations. Initially, the story talks about Carmen’s mother, Calleta, and her relationship with a housekeeper/servant, Fabius. After the death of Carmen’s father, her mother only spoke in her native tongue to Fabius and drank the champagne that she and her husband had the night he proposed. However, we quickly learn that her mother died after a stroke out at sea.

After her death, Carmen’s house began to add rooms to itself every year, which architects could not fully explain. The readers discover that the house rapidly changes after an incident with Carmen out at sea and almost wrecking. However, all the rooms were built the same. On page 5, we get some description of the identical styles of each bedroom, stating, “The rooms were bedrooms and sitting rooms. Their walls were painted white, their ceilings blue. The bedrooms were furnished identically: a bed, a bureau, and a night table.”

An important detail to note is that the house changing itself is not the only mystery we get. The character Fabius is a mystery in himself. He understands the blueprint of the ever-changing house without explanation, and when asked how he knows the place, Fabius brushes it off. Throughout this story, the readers do not get a reason why Fabius and Carmen’s mother was so close or why he knows the house and most of his life. Finally, after Carmen finishes reading the book Room by the Sea in its original language, do we understand how Fabius knows so much and what his life has been like. 

Fabius is around 100 years old and is a descendant of those who survived the sinking o Atlantis. Initially, the people who survived the destruction of their city became fishermen near the Pyrenees and evolved to need to live by the water. They have one year to live as sea creatures when they die, finally passing from this earth. We discover that Fabius is not the only descendant of Atlanteans but also Carmen’s mom. 

This story is both whimsical and confusing. While there is not a complete understanding of how the house changes on its own, there was a mention of a previous home being burned down that was initially her mother’s. This house not only looks like the house by the end of the story but also the place Carmen tried to sketch from her mind but never seemed to get right. On the last page of the story, when Carmen is finally ready to leave her childhood home, she gives one more look at the house. She states, “When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw, not the house she had just left, but the large house in the photograph, and her sketches, its windows lit up and the sea behind it a luminous blue.” In a way, this story feels like it has come full circle, and the readers feel satisfied that everything is as it once was.