And we were there, a small area, a semicircle on the courteous edge of a provincial road. We were there, last Saturday, San Martino, a hill hamlet of Sessa Aurunca, highest point in Caserta, to honor Carmine Saponetti, a forgotten protagonist of the history and sport of that territory, at the boundaries of time.

The plaque for a cycling champion from a century ago, two-time Giro stage winner, world record holder for long distances on the track, Carmine Saponetti... We were there, civil and religious institutions, his children, grandchildren, the sober local people, on a Saturday in late October, 35 years after his passing, which revived a memory and a world of century-old olive trees from spring. The words, the beautiful words, the clear voices, the Mayor, the parish priest, a journalist, the words, how beautiful the words, their sound, even without music, seeming like singer-songwriters, the gray sky, the meadow, the heathland...

We were there, not few, not many, solitudes that in the name of a cyclist became good company. And suddenly, a hand on your arm, a small, elderly gentleman, calling you with his hand on your arm, urging you with his hand, accompanied by a younger woman... And his gestures in the air pointing not at swallows or trees or tired seagulls' bold trajectories, but at the sky and a ruined structure and a farmhouse opposite. And you talking and seeking answers to the why of these anomalous and brusque gestures, and his voice that was not a voice, but the formless presence of an incoherent guttural sound...

"Excuse me, doctor, it's my father, unfortunately suffering from complete aphasia after a cerebral stroke, thirty years ago, back then there was no speech therapy, nor money to seek modern centers, down here..." And his mysterious heart and heartbeat accents in movements, Homeric, a circle, an index, an emotion, the daughter translating with confidence acquired over the years his unknown language... "Doctor, I believe he wants to make you understand that he knew this cyclist from many decades ago, hence these intense gestures, and that structure was perhaps the school where they went together, perhaps though..."

And you were moved like never before, by the thought that a cyclist no longer alive, in a pause area of our fleeting existence, could still give breath. Even to those who no longer had an expressive voice. And of how much useless clamor of our daily life, sporting and not, this silence rising exclamatory from the heart could extinguish every megaphone, reset every audio. Remembering a cyclist, with little voice and little light, and feeling miraculously less alone.