Piotr and his wife have been living together in London for quite some time, and he has met virtually every member of her Polish family—every member except her grandmother, Irena. He goes to the airport to retrieve her, but when he finally sees her emerge from the terminal, she drops her glasses on the way to meet him. Fumbling and slipping on the floor, she accidentally breaks them, then mutters, “Little pig!” Confused, Piotr goes to meet her.   A very long time ago, in Irena’s memory, her mother was fleeing from the Russian soldiers who had destroyed her home and murdered her husband. She had bundled her four children, three daughters and one infant son, onto a sleigh and lashed their horse onward through the snow. However, the wolves in the woods they were racing through had been starving, since the Russian soldiers had killed all of the villagers’ livestock. Therefore, they began pursuing the horse, desperate for a meal. Knowing they would never reach the safety of her parents’ village if the horse died, Irena’s mother urged the horse to go faster and faster. Even so, the wolves caught up to the exhausted horse, and the mother reached inside the sleigh to find the basket where she kept the piglet. She had hoped to use the animal as a decoy, distracting the wolves long enough for the horse to carry them away. To her dismay, someone had stolen the piglet or set it free as she and her family were preparing their escape.   The wolves kept attacking the horse, and Irena’s mother knew she didn’t have much time left. She snapped at Irena, her oldest daughter, to hand her the baby boy. Irena clung to him. The son had been the treasure of her mother’s dead husband, but her mother pulled him free of Irena’s hands anyway. She threw him to the wolves, anguished and horrified by what she had done. The wolves fell back, excited for the easy prey, and the sleigh kept going. When it finally reached the mother’s parents’ village, the horse died immediately. Irena, sitting beside her sleeping sisters, was frozen in shock.   When Piotr offers Irena his sympathies for her broken glasses, she tells him not to worry and that it was simply a “little pig”. Observing the confusion in his face, she explains that her glasses were a sacrifice to make sure nothing went wrong during her visit.