A Consuming Fire

By Joseph M. Callewaert

It is the gripping story of Michael Bertram who dies while climbing Mont Blanc (15,770ft), in France. He is cremated and somehow comes back among the living. This creates terror not only for his widow, Christa, but for Peter Sorel, his business partner as well as his friends. The reader is brought into a universe of trembling mystery and awe. Has Bertram really returned from the dead? Read the book. It is an astonishing tale, very well written. And the end will surprise you mightily!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490883571

Joseph M. Callewaert

Joseph M. Callewaert, Knight Commander of the French Order of Merit, was born in Belgium and educated in France. Now a US citizen, he lives in Gulf Breeze, Florida. He has written three delightful travelogues about undiscovered France, as well as Lights Out for Freedom, a vivid retelling of his youthful experiences in Belgium during the Nazi occupation. He is also the author of a fascinating book about Saint Paul.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 JOSEPH M. CALLEWAERT.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-8358-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-8359-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-8357-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015909166

Print information available on the last page.

WestBow Press rev. date: 06/17/2015

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Prologue

It is desirable that the plain facts regarding Michael Bertram should be laid before the general public. But I confess that I approach my task with diffidence.

I know that however careful I may be to confine myself to a simple statement of what occurred, to whatever degree I scrupulously may guard against my temptation to overstate or to color, I am convinced that I will have difficulty gaining credence. This is not said by way of complaint. I recognize that I am a victim not of men, but of circumstances, which must bring me in contact with the skepticism lying at the base of human character. It is common knowledge that individuals are credulous to the highest degree, but the human race as a whole is skeptical. Anything new is approached invariably, indeed inevitably—and no doubt wisely—with suspicion. It is that attitude of mind that I must be prepared to meet. For I have to tell of things that have not happened before within the knowledge of man.

It is a curious irony that the central figure in these events should have been a man who embodied absolute skepticism. I suppose you would search the world in vain for a more thorough materialist than Michael Bertram. He believed in nothing whatsoever but what he could see or touch or reach through the medium of the senses, and he regarded physical life as the end-all of existence. Indeed, he objected to the very word skeptic as applied to himself; he said he did not doubt, but that he knew, that he was certain.

Had such a man been a pessimist, he would have resented the fact of his birth. But he was not a pessimist. On the contrary, he was genial and happy, bubbling always with an irrepressible sense of humor. I have never known anyone who combined so hard a materialistic standpoint with such innate cheerfulness or joie de vivre. He had had his full share of troubles, but he regarded life as highly desirable. He was thankful for it, and he clung to it; it represented, as I have heard him put it, our one chance. Accordingly, he resented not birth but death. Particularly, he felt that anyone who died young, or in the fullness of physical powers and capacities for enjoyment, had been defrauded of a fundamental right.

He could not be moved in argument. He might admit isolated points, but you would find him, at the end of it all, embedded in his original position as if it were a concrete wall. I have sometimes felt quite irritated by his profound belief in his own infallibility and by its implied relegation of all who differed from him to the category of fools, or sheep following fools. The faith in continuity that informs mankind as a whole, whether it be the fruit of religion or of reason or of simple intuition, he brushed aside as the idle speculation of people who think what they want to think.

Among this class—though he never said so—I know that he included me. He listened patiently and politely to any views I might express about my faith, but he regarded me, I felt sure, as a reasonably intelligent being weakly engulfed in the vortex of conventional beliefs. I am a busy man. My life has been occupied in the main with the affairs of the world, but such thought as I have given to deeper problems has not led me to agreeing with Bertram. Personality, it appeared to me, is so portentous a reality, that it cannot have evolved to endure only for a space of time, immeasurably short, in the infinite.

Chapter 1

At the time of the events I am about to narrate, Bertram was forty-one; I was four years younger. For over a decade, we had been in partnership as wine importers. Starting with meager resources, we passed through anxious times, which left their marks upon us, but had slowly built up a prosperous and lucrative business. Today, any of our friends in New England, Connecticut, and New York, as well as our correspondents in Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Rhône region in France, and Italy’s Tuscany, will testify to the substantial position and sound reputation of the firm Sorel-Tram, Fine Wine Importers.

My partner was a man of medium height, strongly built, with rugged features. Though I was the taller of the two, he could easily tip the scales against me. His somewhat small eyes appeared, even in his serious moments, to have a smile at the back of them; little creases radiated from their corners. A slight perpendicular groove on each side of his mouth was produced by muscles continually relaxed in laughter.

Bertram had married some seven years before the time of which I write and from that day had regarded my continuing bachelorhood as open to humorous treatment. His wife, Christa, whom I knew well, was a small person, though by no means diminutive. She had a pretty face and form and a pair of the most attractive green eyes I have ever seen. She had no lack of personality yet was essentially a dependent woman. Nothing could have made her a feminist. She needed someone to lean upon, and Bertram’s substantial form and concrete character suited her admirably. She had a total belief in him and accepted him wholly. Any course Michael Bertram proposed, any view he held, was to her mind necessarily sound. He never opposed or contradicted her if she got angry with him or made some obviously impracticable suggestion. He even appeared to agree with her, to regard her annoyance as the just resentment of a sensible woman burdened with a pitifully brainless and incompetent husband. His belief that she would subsequently come to see her mistake for herself was always justified, but he never called upon her to acknowledge it. Strongly contrasted as were their two characters, I have never known a happier marriage.

So we come to the events of last August. In that month, for the first time during our business connection, my partner and I decided to take a holiday together. In previous years, the question as to which of us should remain at his post over the dog days was always a delicate one. Whenever I had consigned Bertram to that duty, particularly since his marriage, I had started my travels with the feeling of behaving shabbily. This year, however, circumstances had conspired to obviate the annual difficulty. The affairs of the firm were jogging along a straight road, there were no outstanding matters likely to need attention in the immediate future, business was exceptionally slack, and we had a capable manager to leave in charge.

Accordingly, it came about that when Delta flight 008 from Boston arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport on the sixth of the month, it carried among its passengers a party of three, consisting of the Bertrams and myself. We were soon on our way to catch the TGV (the French high-speed train) at the Gare de Lyon for Genève and Saint-Gervais, and then on to Chamonix, in the French Alps.

During the long journey, Mrs. Bertram and I formed a sort of camaraderie as fellow victims of my partner’s irrepressible sense of humor. He made each of us the butt of his jokes in turn, with perfect impartiality, and always expected the other to take his side.

It is among my misfortunes to possess a set of vocal organs peculiarly incapable of accommodating themselves to the French accent, and this Bertram knew. One of the main reasons I brought you on this trip, Crissy, he said to his wife at some point, was to hear Peter speak French. It’s a privilege not to be missed.

Later, Christa curled up on the seat of the railroad car, in the hope of getting some sleep, and accidentally revealed more stocking than she knew. Judging from Christa’s interesting pose at the present moment, Peter, said Michael, you wouldn’t think she is thirty-four years old.

She dragged her skirt over the limb. You are not a gentleman, Bertram, she said.

None of us were experienced mountaineers, but we were all fond of climbing. By the time we had been two weeks at Chamonix, we had accomplished all the minor mountain walks and had made three excursions over snow from Pierre-Pointue and Montanvert. Our ambitions grew, and ultimately, the question of attempting the ascent of Mont Blanc was broached.

I don’t see why we shouldn’t do it, said Bertram at dinner one night. Scores of people get up every year, and they can’t all be experts.

Of course, it’s not what alpinists would call a climb, I said. It’s a long, heavy pull.

Bertram finished his soup. The snow looks soft, doesn’t it? he said. Like a great pillow. It would be a restful place to end our days.

The main thing to guard against is the weather, I said.

"The Michelin Guide," Bertram contradicted, says that is the guide’s problem.

I ignored this and added after a pause, We are in very good condition by now.

And even if you did slip over a precipice, you would fall very lightly, Peter.

I was too used to his remarks of this kind to take any notion of them. I’m quite willing to make the attempt, if you are, I said. I suppose it would cost us two to three hundred dollars each.

How do you make that out?

The guides and the bill at the hut. Perhaps two of us could do it for a little less.

Mrs. Bertram had said nothing since the conversation turned to the subject of the Mont Blanc. Now she suddenly intervened. I simply won’t sit and listen to it any longer!

"He is rather cheap," I agreed.

Oh, I don’t mean Michael’s nonsense. Everybody knows he can never talk anything else.

What then? I asked.

I mean this talk about you two going up Mont Blanc.

Bertram said nothing.

I don’t think there would really be any cause to be anxious, I said as gently as I could. We wouldn’t go unless the weather was good, and you would be able to watch us nearly all the way through the telescope on the hotel veranda.

"It’s not that. How idiotic you are! she snapped. But I have been thinking about it and hoping to climb up there ever since I came to Chamonix. And now you are calmly talking as if I were to be left behind … to watch you through a telescope!"

Bertram smiled over his fish. I thought he intended to leave me to get my foot out of the sticky patch in which I had planted it. However he came to my assistance. I never suggested it, he said.

Well, somebody did. Peter did.

Peter, your turn, Bertram said.

My foolish and irrelevant remarks, I declared, don’t affect the question at all.

Bertram looked at me for a moment, almost seriously. You think she could manage it?

It’s a grind.

I am quite sure I can climb as well as either of you, uttered the lady, glowing with an outraged sense of injustice but somewhat mollified, it seemed, by a tardy disposition to acknowledge her claims. I have proven it again and again.

I believe you can, said her husband. He returned to his fish. Anyhow, he added after consuming a mouthful, if Christa gets tired, Peter, you can carry her. There is not much of her.

Chapter 2

That apparently settled it. I don’t remember any further questions arising as to whether we should attempt the climb or if Christa should come with us. We made our preparations, and three days later, accompanied by two guides, we struck upward among the wooded slopes. It was difficult to realize as we followed eight yards or so in the wake of the lead guide, along a well-worn track and occasionally across shallow streams, that we had already started the ascent of the highest mountain in Europe (15,770 ft.).

From time to time as we went up, we met parties returning from short early morning walks. On each occasion, we felt a childish glow of satisfaction from the superior hazard and difficulty of the enterprise upon which we were set.

Our guides and ropes and ice axes, and the hour at which we started, evidently declared our purpose to these people. But only once did we hear it remarked upon. That was when a young woman turned, just after she had passed us, and remarked to a male companion, She is going up Mont Blanc.

Evidently you and I are going for a pleasant stroll, remarked Bertram to me.

About three o’clock we reached the Glacier des Bossons and there, for the first time, the ropes the guides carried came into use. We picked our way among the fissures, using natural bridges when the clefts were too wide to step across. Here and there we had to climb heavy, dislocated ice blocks with the help of our axes. At one point, we were driven by the barriers confronting us to take a considerable detour. It took us over two hours to cross the glacier, though it is barely two miles in width, but ultimately, we reached the solid