Synopsis

A cedar tree grows in a wood. It is cut down, and from its wood comes the pencil in this story. The pencil is passed along, from a shop in Canada all the way to a table in a Buenos Aires café. In each place it finds its owner for a time: a prisoner planning an escape, a student in love, a traveling architect, a portrait artist who works in a hotel. Finally, moved along by the force of chance or destiny, it comes into the possession of a writer who tells us of this apparently haphazard journey, which is no more—and no less—than the life of a pencil.