Anthony’s Yamaha YZ motorcycle

Anthony’s Yamaha YZ is more than a vehicle: it is a coveted family possession through which Anthony experiences speed, independence, and a possible escape from the limits of his everyday life. Its disappearance after a party in Drimblois turns that private fascination into a family crisis, while Hacine Bouali’s later use of the bike links it to the conflict among the boys and to the prospect of selling it for cash.

Identity and Place in the Family

The motorcycle is a red-and-white 1982 Yamaha YZ marked with the number 16. It is kept at the back of the garage, wedged behind an old ping-pong table and covered by a tarp. When Anthony uncovers it, he runs a hand over its studded tires and takes pleasure in the machine. The details make the bike a tangible object of attention, carefully stored but not out of reach: it belongs to the family’s material world, while offering Anthony an imagined life beyond it.

Patrick Casati had raced motorcycles in the past and sometimes let Anthony take the YZ around the neighborhood when he was in a good mood. Hélène Casati opposed this indulgence because she associated motorcycle riding with serious crashes. Patrick, by contrast, recognized Anthony’s affinity for riding. The parents’ differing responses make permission conditional and the bike a small point of tension at home: Anthony has access to it, but not control over it.

For Anthony, the motorcycle also carries an expectation of a future of his own. He imagines eventually having a bike, and associates that ambition with the seaside, sunsets, girls in bathing suits, and Aerosmith songs. Those daydreams enlarge the YZ beyond its immediate function. It becomes a vehicle for an adolescent fantasy of movement and adulthood, even though his actual access depends on his father’s moods and his mother’s fears.

Anthony’s Rides

When Anthony takes the motorcycle out, he moves it carefully through the darkness to avoid his mother’s Opel. Once safely away, he kick-starts it and rides without a helmet. The change from quiet maneuvering in the garage to fast travel marks the difference between the caution imposed at home and the freedom he seeks on the road. For a time, riding absorbs his attention; he stops thinking about anything else.

On the journey to Drimblois, Anthony’s cousin rides behind him as they take highway D953. Anthony accelerates on straight sections and leans into turns. The cousin eventually asks him to slow down, a reminder that the shared excitement of the ride does not eliminate its danger. After about twenty minutes they reach the village and locate the party: a modern house with extensive glass, a broad lawn, and a brightly lit swimming pool. Anthony brings the YZ to a stop beside two other two-wheelers before the pair go in.

The ride gives the cousins a temporary sense of daring and solidarity, but the motorcycle’s presence at the party also places it in a setting where it is exposed to people beyond the family. That shift—from a machine stored in a garage and taken out under Anthony’s control to property left while the boys attend a gathering—precedes its disappearance.

Disappearance and Search

By the following morning, Anthony and his cousin return to the stacks of wood where they had left the bike. The YZ is gone. Anthony drops to his knees, and the absence abruptly replaces the exhilaration of the previous night with a practical and emotional crisis. The motorcycle is not merely missing transportation: it is the object through which Anthony has exercised a kind of freedom, and its loss threatens the trust and stability surrounding that freedom.

When Anthony’s mother asks what happened to the motorcycle, he does not react. Hélène shakes him and presses him for an answer. He asks what they are going to do; she says they have to find it, then warns that otherwise the family is finished. Her response conveys the stakes as she sees them: recovering the bike is not an optional matter or a private inconvenience but an urgent problem for the household. The exchange also places Anthony’s act and its consequences inside the relationship between mother and son.

Anthony’s cousin later explains the sequence to Le Grand: the party, Hacine’s arrival, the motorcycle’s disappearance, and the suspicions that followed. Le Grand whistles when he hears about the bike and remarks on the likely reaction when Anthony’s father finds out. The account establishes the party and Hacine’s presence as central to the boys’ suspicions, while leaving the recovery unresolved at that point in the story.

Hacine and the Bike’s Changed Use

Hacine is subsequently shown riding the Yamaha down the hill from the ZUP and through downtown. He speeds through narrow streets, avoids braking, and refuses to stop at red lights. This use sharply contrasts with Anthony’s earlier ride to a party: the same machine that had embodied a boy’s dream of freedom now carries Hacine through an agitated, reckless flight. The motorcycle’s movement links the two youths without making their experiences identical.

After leaving the bike near a field of hay rolls, Hacine sits in the shade and plays with a Zippo lighter. The narrative then returns to the motorcycle as a possible source of money: by Monday, he intends to ask a scrap dealer about selling it, expecting to get at least five hundred francs. His plan treats the YZ as salvageable value rather than as an object of attachment or as the center of a family’s search. The contrast exposes a difference in what the motorcycle means to its riders: for Anthony, it is bound up with aspiration and access to a coveted life; for Hacine, at this point, it can be converted into cash.

Narrative Significance

The YZ’s changing status carries the motorcycle from protected possession to means of escape, then to missing property and prospective scrap. Its material details—the number 16, the tarp, the garage, the route to Drimblois—anchor those shifts in a specific object rather than in an abstract conflict. Once it vanishes, a familiar possession becomes conspicuous through its absence, and the practical question of who has it draws attention to the boys’ unequal claims, risks, and ambitions.

The bike also makes freedom conditional. Anthony can ride only because Patrick sometimes allows it, while Hélène regards the same activity as a danger. Later, the cousins’ fast nighttime journey brings excitement but also a request to slow down; after the party, the loss produces fear of family consequences and an urgent search. The motorcycle therefore connects desire to vulnerability: it offers movement, but it cannot guarantee control over where that movement leads or who will ultimately possess it.