Speculations about Lilya's and Osip's involvement with the NKVD and State Political Directorate started during their lifetime. According to the Swedish critic and Mayakovsky's biographer , Boris Pasternak once told Roman Jakobson that Lilya Brik "frightened" him by saying that her guests would start supper "right after Osya returns from Cheka", and that he later called their apartment "Moscow police department". There's also a well-known story how someone – supposedly Sergei Yesenin – wrote a joke poem on Briks' doors with chalk that read "You think that Brik lives here, a language specialist? A fink lives here and a сhekist". Anna Akhmatova also called the house of Briks "a saloon where writers met with chekists" according to Lydia Chukovskaya.